Meta wants to build a search engine and integrate it into its AI bots

AI might be the technological innovation that makes Meta a major player in the search industry. The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp is reportedly working on a search engine that would supply its Meta AI chatbots with answers and information.

As first reported by The Information, Meta seems to be venturing into search to lessen its dependence on fellow Big Tech firms like Google and Microsoft (which owns the search engine Bing). The new product would deliver details on topics like news, sports, and stocks to users who consult Meta AI chatbots across the company’s range of owned-and-operated platforms. Meta did not comment on the Information report.

Meta made AI a central focus of its most recent Newfronts pitch, and it has accelerated its development of chatbots and AI-generated avatars. To make its AI products less reliant on its main competitors, it has teamed up with third-party organizations like Reuters, which just signed on as Meta AI’s official news supplier.

Those decisions have helped Meta AI reach 185 million weekly active users

, putting it within hailing distance of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and its 250 million weekly users. But ChatGPT still has an edge on Meta AI in terms of search; OpenAI’s relationship with primary investor Microsoft gives it an easy connection to Bing. Even so, OpenAI is working on its own AI-powered search engine called SearchGPT, and it is integrating its results on other platforms.

Meta’s plan to fire up its own search engine may be all about AI, but a product of that ilk could have other potential advantages for the Menlo Park, California-based tech giant. TikTok’s status as a Google Search competitor has led to the launch of search ads that now represent a potent revenue stream for the app’s partners. Now that Meta has consolidated its ad formats within a single program, it could consider search ads as well — but of course, it will have to actually launch its search engine first.