Meta is reportedly building an AI search engine

Meta is building an in-house AI-powered search engine that provides answers and summaries about current events and people in its Meta AI chatbot. Currently, the functionality relies on Google Search and Microsoft's Bing. 

The Information (via Engadget) reports that Meta is doing this to reduce its reliance on Google and Microsoft. An unnamed source told the publication that Meta wants a backup option in case Google and Microsoft withdraw from the partnership in the future.  

Recently, Meta struck a multi-year deal with Reuters that allows it to show real-time news updates in the chatbot to users in the US. A few months ago, Business Insider (via The Verge) reported that Meta's web crawler was scooping up training data for its AI models.

The Information verified this claim through its sources within Meta, and they confirmed the company has been indexing data for the last eight months. The thinking behind this is to make Meta as autonomous as possible and reduce its dependence on other players in big tech.