O’Reilly partners with Microsoft to launch open source NLWeb, enabling simpler creation of AI Apps
O’Reilly, an online learning platform for technology professionals, has announced a new strategic partnership with Microsoft as it integrates Natural Language Web (NLWeb) into its websites.
NWWeb’s centralized search understands context and intent, allowing human users and AI to ask complex, conversational questions and get relevant results without needing to visit a centralized AI chat or search site.
Microsoft’s NLWeb offers a simple mechanism to add an AI search and other services to an existing web page. It claims to make it east to turn any website into an AI-powered app. O’Reilly’s integration of NLWeb will initially enable conversational searchers across its 59,000 books, using metadata to ensure accurate results without web crawling. It says the tool will be available to public users “soon”.
“We see NLWeb as a crucial component of an open ecosystem of protocols and tools that will shape the next evolution of the internet,” explains Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO at O’Reilly. “By implementing this technology early, we're reminding our technically savvy audience that the original promise of the decentralized World Wide Web does not need to be abandoned to get the benefits of conversational AI.”
"That original promise, in which anyone could provide content and services on the terms they set (free, paywalled, ad-supported or subscription, or something in between) has gradually been replaced with one in which large centralized gatekeepers control and profit from access.
“Content is hoovered up into giant models and provided directly to users, with less and less traffic returned to the originating sites. NLWeb is a bold attempt to reverse that trend. This means that any site can easily offer the kind of conversational search queries that might now largely be accessed via sites like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google."
Ramanathan Guha, Technical Fellow and Corporate Vice President at Microsoft, adds: “Tim and the O’Reilly team have always been one of the bedrocks of the open internet – protocols, formats, code. It is wonderful to be able to work with them (again) on the first step towards bringing AI to the web.”
Last year, O’Reilly introduced its AI Academy, a platform designed to provide comprehensive GenAI training for workforces.
