Meta Enters AI Search Engine Race, Aiming To Compete With Google And Microsoft

Meta Platforms is reportedly developing its own AI-powered search engine, aiming to reduce its reliance on Google and Microsoft’s Bing, according to a report from The Information. Meta’s move positions it as a new entrant in the increasingly competitive AI search market, alongside established players like OpenAI, Google and Microsoft. The new tool would enable Meta’s chatbot, Meta AI, to provide conversational responses to real-time queries on its platforms, including WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook.

With this AI search engine project, Meta seeks to add search capabilities directly within its platforms, offering users real-time, conversational answers about news, sports, and other current events. Currently, Meta relies on external search engines, namely Google and Bing, to generate such responses. The reported search engine would integrate into Meta’s chatbot, Meta AI, allowing it to respond more autonomously, reducing dependency on third-party search services.

Other tech giants are also ramping up their efforts in AI search. Google has begun implementing its Gemini AI model to enhance user search experience with more conversational responses, while Microsoft supports OpenAI's ChatGPT with Bing as its source for up-to-date web information. The competitive landscape reflects a race to redefine how users access information through AI-powered tools, potentially reshaping the traditional search model with real-time conversational AI.

This development also touches on growing concerns regarding web scraping and AI training. As companies like Meta, OpenAI and Google utilise web data to improve their models, questions of fair compensation and copyright for content creators continue to emerge.

Meta has recently declared that its chatbot will incorporate Reuters content for answering real-time questions, signalling the company’s steps toward content partnerships. Meta has not yet officially commented on this AI initiative, which follows other recent moves by the company to embed AI into its ecosystem.