Microsoft Corp has threatened to cut off access to its
internet-search data, which it licences to rival search engines, if they do not stop using it as the basis for their own
artificial intelligence (AI) chat products, according to people familiar with the dispute.
The software maker licences the data in its
Bing search index – a map of the internet that can be quickly scanned in real time – to other companies that offer web search, such as Apollo Global Management’s
Yahoo and
DuckDuckGo.