The latest version of Microsoft's Bing (opens in new tab) has an AI-powered chatbot. The world's second most popular search engine is obviously hoping that this AI bet will pay off, but sites whose content is listed in these results will be less than pleased.

Bing's new chat feature answers questions with long-winded answers in an easy-to-read conversational format, essentially what OpenAI's ChatGPT is like if you've ever used it. Microsoft states that this feature is "more powerful than ChatGPT and is customized specifically for search."

Along with regular search results, the chat feature allows users to refine the information they receive. One of the demos embedded below breaks down the differences between inexpensive TVs after a couple of follow-up queries with the AI.

Bing with AI gets the answer the same way AI Art is generated. And, as with AI art, the creators of the content the system is trained on receive little attribution or compensation. The answers have a small numbered field that acts as a footnote, indicating the source of the content, but it doesn't motivate users to click on it when the relevant information is already right in front of them. Let's be honest, how many times have you looked something up on Wikipedia and clicked on a site in the footnotes?

In this click-based economy, less traffic means less revenue for the sites that create the content that feeds the machine. In the long run, this will affect the sustainability of websites that make money purely by creating original tutorials, how-tos, and buying guides.

Currently, Google already has a problem with the way it handles link attribution: in 2019, a law was passed in France (opens in new tab) that requires Google to show only the headlines and names of press publications in search results for users in the EU. It is up to the content publishers themselves to decide whether or not they want snippets of their articles to appear in Google's search results. It all started when a French news organization was trying to get Google to pay royalties for clicks diverted from their website.

We have already seen several legal challenges to AI art tools, such as Stable Diffusion being sued by Getty Images (opens in new tab) for copyright infringement. When will a major online publisher do the same?

One potential answer would be for AI-powered search engines to pay some form of compensation or royalties for scraped content. So far, however, there is still no indication that either Microsoft or Google are interested in doing so.

And if you're thinking, "Who cares, no one uses Bing," Google just announced its own ChatGPT-like AI chatbot (opens in new tab) called Bard.