As part of an effort to make building AI-powered chatbots on the web simpler, Microsoft is launching an open project called NLWeb.
Announced at Build 2025, NLWeb lets websites provide a “conversational interface” — i.e. a text field and a submission button — for their users with a few lines of code, the AI model of their choice, and their own data. A retailer could use NLWeb to create a chatbot that helps users choose clothing for specific trips, for example, while a cooking site could use it to build a bot that suggests dishes to pair with a recipe.
Webpages built using NLWeb can optionally make their content discoverable and accessible to AI platforms that support MCP, Anthropic’s standard for connecting AI models to the systems where data resides.
“[W]e believe [NLWeb] can play a similar role to HTML for the agentic web,” writes Microsoft in press materials provided to TechCrunch. “[It] allows users to interact directly with web content in a rich, semantic manner.”
Microsoft didn’t say either way, but NLWeb may have its origins in tech from ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Microsoft’s close collaborator.
The Information reported last November that OpenAI was working with partners including Condé Nast, Redfin, Eventbrite, and Priceline on an early version of NLWeb. Back then, OpenAI was pitching the tech as a way for brands to bring ChatGPT-like conversational features to their websites, but the project faced several delays due to technical hurdles.
Months later, it seems NLWeb is ready for prime time — albeit perhaps in a different form than OpenAI originally envisioned.
