Microsoft has reportedly warned two Bing-powered search engines that it will restrict their access to Microsoft’s search index if they continue to use it as a foundation for their AI tools.

Microsoft licenses out Bing’s search data to several search engines, including DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, and You.com, which helps to conserve some of the time and resources that come along with crawling the entire web. However, Microsoft draws the line at using Bing’s search index for AI chatbots, believing that it is a violation of its contract. The company has threatened to terminate its agreements with search engines accused of misusing this information.

DuckDuckGo, You.com, and Neeva have introduced AI tools of their own, and Microsoft likely wants to make its search data exclusive to Bing’s chatbot, which is already powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4. The chatbot is capable of answering various questions, creating summaries, generating code, writing social media posts, and more.

Microsoft has said that it will continue to work with its partners directly and provide any information needed to find a path forward.

Manish