Microsoft has threatened to block access to internet search data it licenses to competing search engines with Bing if they don't stop using the data as the basis for developing their own AI-powered chats, reports Bloomberg..

Software maker licenses its Bing search index data to other search engines, including Yahoo and DuckDuckGo. In February, Microsoft integrated ChatGPT artificial intelligence into Bing.. Competitors quickly began to implement their own AI chatbots: Google released the Bard tool; DuckDuckGo introduced the DuckAssist feature; You and Neeva - YouChat and NeevaAI.

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These search chatbots aim to combine the conversational skills of ChatGPT with the information provided by a conventional search engine.. Regular search engines DuckDuckGo, You.

com and Neeva use Bing to get some of the information since indexing the entire internet is expensive - servers to store the data and constantly scanning the internet to enable updates.

Microsoft has told at least two customers that using its Bing search index to power its AI chatbots violates the terms of their contract, according to people who spoke on condition of anonymity.. The company said it could terminate licenses granting access to its search index..

Earlier, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said that he was "