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Insight and Technology

How AI chatbots in search engines will completely change the internet

Moves by Google, Microsoft and Baidu to bring AI chatbots into their search engines may bring big advantages, but they could also damage many industries and change the very way we interact with the web

By Matthew Sparkes

17 February 2023

A girl using a keyboard to chat on the internet

Most people access the internet via search engines – and changing how they work could have big repercussions

supersizer/Getty Images

The progress of artificial intelligence models over the past few years has been faster than almost anyone expected. Some advances have left society scrabbling to adapt. Teachers are struggling to stop students using chatbots to write their essays, artists claim they are losing paid work to image-creating AIs and efforts are under way in some places to replace journalists with large language models. But bigger changes are afoot.

Google, Microsoft and Baidu, which run…

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