Microsoft Unveils NLWeb: Transforming Websites into AI-Powered Platforms

NLWeb is Microsoft's project to bring more chatbots to webpages | TechCrunch

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.

NLWeb is Microsoft's new, open-source tool that integrates generative AI search into any website - SiliconANGLE

NLWeb is Microsoft's new, open-source tool that integrates generative AI search into any website With the launch of a new, open-source project called NLWeb, Microsoft Corp. says it can transform any existing website into an artificial intelligence-powered application by integrating natural language capabilities. The project, announced at Microsoft Build 2025 today, is meant to simplify the creation of natural language interfaces that can be embedded into any website. NLWeb, or Natural Language Web, is a new project that aims to provide developers with the fastest and easiest way to turn any website into an AI app powered by the large language model of their choice. Once integrated, people will be able to query the contents of any website using their voice, just as they do with AI assistants such as ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot. The company said that each NLWeb instance is a Model Context Protocol server, which enables sites to make their content discoverable and accessible for AI agents. Ultimately, it envisions NLWeb becoming agentic AI's equivalent of the HTML protocol that's used to access the internet via web browsers. Microsoft explained that NLWeb uses the semistructured data already published by websites, such as Schema.org and RSS information. It combines these with LLMs to create a natural language interface that will be accessible to both humans and AI agents. The semistructured data will be enhanced by external knowledge from the underlying LLM that powers the natural language interface. For instance, it will be able to layer on geographic insights when someone enters a query asking about restaurants, the company said. Because the project is entirely open, it's technology-agnostic, meaning it supports major operating systems besides Windows, such as Android, iOS and Linux. Developers can select the most suitable components for their needs, including the underlying LLM and vector databases to enhance the search experience. Microsoft said the goal of NLWeb is to bring the benefits of generative AI search directly to every website. Just as HTML made it simple for almost anyone to create and access websites using a browser, NLWeb aims to make it easy for publishers to create intelligent, natural language experiences to help users better navigate their websites. It's also building NLWeb with an eye toward future AI agents, which it believes will soon make up a significant amount of internet traffic. NLWeb was conceived and developed by Microsoft Technical Fellow R.V. Guha, who is the creator of widely used web standards such as RSS, RDF and Schema.org. Already it has an extensive list of contributors who are aiding in its development. The company said much of the focus has been on making NLWeb as easy as possible to implement with any website. It's based on a lightweight codebase that controls the core services for handling natural language queries, as well as documentation on how this can be extended and customized. Elsewhere, there are dozens of connectors for popular AI models and vector databases, plus documentation that explains how to add other models not on the official list. There's also a range of tools for adding data in Schema.org, RSS and other formats directly to any vector database, and a web server frontend and user interface that can be directly integrated into any site. A number of websites have already deployed NLWeb, including Tripadvisor, Shopify and Eventbrite. Contributors include organizations such as Chicago Public Media, Common Sense Media, Inception Labs, O'Reilly Media and Snowflake Inc.

Your website can now get its own AI brain thanks to Microsoft's NLWeb

Microsoft has launched NLWeb, an open project aimed at simplifying the integration of AI-powered chatbots on websites. Announced at Build 2025, NLWeb enables web developers to add a conversational interface to their sites using a few lines of code, their preferred AI model, and their own data. With NLWeb, a retailer can create a chatbot that assists users in selecting clothing for specific occasions, while a cooking website can build a bot that suggests complementary dishes to a recipe. The project allows web pages to optionally make their content discoverable and accessible to AI platforms supporting MCP, Anthropic's standard for connecting AI models to data sources. Microsoft describes NLWeb as playing a role similar to HTML for the "agentic web," enabling users to interact directly with web content in a rich, semantic manner. The company believes this can enhance user experience by providing more intuitive interactions with web content. The origins of NLWeb are unclear, but it may be linked to technology developed by OpenAI, Microsoft's close collaborator. According to a report by The Information, OpenAI was working on an early version of NLWeb last November with partners such as Condé Nast, Redfin, Eventbrite, and Priceline. OpenAI initially pitched the technology as a means for brands to integrate ChatGPT-like conversational features into their websites, but the project faced technical delays. Microsoft's NLWeb appears to be ready for implementation, potentially in a different form than OpenAI had originally envisioned. By making NLWeb an open project, Microsoft is opening up the possibility for widespread adoption and further development by the developer community.

Microsoft Wants Websites to Have an AI-Powered Natural Language Interface

NLWeb is technology agnostic and supports all major operating systems Microsoft introduced a new open project dubbed NLWeb at its Build 2025 conference on Monday. Short for Natural Language Web, the NLWeb project aims to build an interface to websites that support artificial intelligence (AI) models. With AI capabilities, these websites will then support natural language queries by users and provide answers for those queries. The Redmond-based tech giant says that NLWeb could have a similar effect in building AI-enabled websites, like the introduction of HTML did for website creation. In a newsroom post, the tech giant announced its new open project dubbed NLWeb. The technology is Microsoft's vision for future websites, where every web page comes with AI capabilities to handle natural language queries. Essentially, this system will replace traditional search boxes on websites with an AI-powered chatbot interface. Introducing the project, the company said NLWeb is "the fastest and easiest way to effectively turn your website into an AI app, allowing users to query the contents of the site by directly using natural language, just like with an AI assistant or Copilot." However, the scope of NLWeb is not just limited to creating AI chatbots on web pages. The company said every such AI-powered website will also act as a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. MCP was developed by Anthropic as a universal, open standard for how AI systems connect to external data hubs. By supporting the protocol, each NLWeb website will also make its content accessible and crawlable to AI agents and other participants in the MCP ecosystem. This will create a new structure for websites where the entire network of NLWeb-enabled websites will be readily available to AI agents for data extraction and to let them perform actions. "Ultimately, we believe NLWeb can play a similar role to HTML in the emerging agentic web," the company said. With NLWeb, Microsoft believes an AI agent-friendly Internet can be created, making the creation and functioning of browser-based agentic tools more common and widely prevalent. In such a system, AI agents can potentially complete much more complex tasks than just purchasing a product online. They can, for example, talk to a brand's sales agent, negotiate discounts, verify warranties, and handle returns autonomously. Microsoft highlights that the open project is technology agnostic and supports all major operating systems, AI models, and vector databases. Notably, NLWeb was coined and developed by RV Guha, the company's recently joined Corporate Vice President and Technical Fellow.

Microsoft Wants to Turn Every Website Into an AI App with NLWeb

Microsoft is encouraging website owners to adopt the NLWeb framework, which will pave the way for the agentic web. On Monday, at the Build 2025 event, Microsoft introduced an open project called NLWeb that can turn any website into an AI-powered app. It basically creates a natural language interface for websites so that users can ask questions in plain English on any website. The idea is to make websites more friendly to AI chatbots and agents. It uses website formats like schema.org and RSS to process and understand the content. Then you can use an AI model of your choice to ask questions from the website. Microsoft says it works with any AI model or vector database. In fact, Microsoft is leveraging Model Context Protocol (MCP) to make each site act like an MCP server. In case you are wondering, how is this useful? Well, it can make websites more interactive and allows websites to join the "agentic web". Some early adopters include Tripadvisor, Shopify, O'Reilly Media, Common Sense Media, and more. If you are a developer, you can go to the NLWeb GitHub repository and explore the project. It provides the core code, MCP connectors for models and vector databases, tools to format your data, a web server frontend, and a simple user interface. Meanwhile, at Build 2025, Microsoft also announced that it's bringing native MCP support to Windows 11 to enable secure AI agents. It appears Microsoft doesn't want to miss the train to the agentic future.

Microsoft to Make Windows Agentic for New Web Experience | PYMNTS.com

NLWeb turns any website agentic. It will let AI agents shop, book and pay for goods and services autonomously. Microsoft is transforming Windows into an agentic AI platform, marking one of the biggest shifts in the operating system's history as the software giant starts building the underpinnings of the new open, agentic web. At this week's Microsoft Build 2025, CEO Satya Nadella said the internet's legacy systems need to be reconfigured to work with the coming wave of AI agents. "We're just about getting into these middle innings of another platform shift, and these middle innings are where all things happen," Nadella said. The CEO noted that in past technology transformations - such as the cloud and mobile -- after the initial wave of early adoption, software engineers get to work in the "middle innings" to transform visions into a practical reality. Nadella said this is where generative AI is today. "In 2025, we're building out this open agentic web at scale," Nadella said. Microsoft's moves come at a time when companies are rapidly adopting GenAI as a way to build a competitive edge, according to PYMNTS data. Nearly two-thirds of product leaders use the tech to innovate, while more than a third use it to collect feedback on those products. Read More: From Spark to Strategy: How Product Leaders Are Using GenAI to Gain a Competitive Edge At Build, Microsoft announced a slew of foundational updates that will enable autonomous AI agents to reason, act, and collaborate directly within Windows, turning the world's most widely used desktop operating system into an intelligent platform for a new generation of software. The move is part of Microsoft's broader strategy to build out what it calls the 'agentic web,' where intelligent agents can seamlessly interact with data, apps, and users. To that end, Microsoft is directly embedding Model Context Protocol (MCP) into Windows. Developed by Anthropic, MCP is a protocol that allows agents to interact with your computer. "We're going to be doing a whole bunch of work over the next handful of months with our partners and collaborators at Anthropic to make sure that the really tough enterprise problems that need to be solved on top of a protocol like MCP get resolved," Nadella said. Using MCP, AI agents like GitHub Copilot can do more than write code; they can also install software, access files and folders, change system settings, open and interact with apps -- with the user's approval. According to the PYMNTS Intelligence report, Payments Execs on Agentic AI: 'The Back Office Will Never Be the Same,' MCP is revolutionary. It serves as the lingua franca for AI models to communicate back and forth, and a game-changing technology that produces better outcomes than previously manual efforts. Read more: Payments Execs on Agentic AI: 'The Back Office Will Never Be the Same Supporting this shift is the Foundry Local, Microsoft's new tool that lets your PC run AI features without needing the internet. It lets apps and assistants think, act, and help directly on the device for faster responses and better privacy. Foundry Local is built into Windows and works with new AI-powered PCs, making it easier for developers to create intelligent software that understands what users need and gets things done for them. Sarbjeet Johal, founder of tech search firm Stackpane, said on X that combining native support for MCP on Windows with Foundry Local is a "killer combination for developers." Also unveiled at the conference is Copilot Tuning, a new feature that allows enterprises to fine-tune or customize AI agents using their own data, tone, and workflows. Developers can train models that reflect a company's legal style, financial knowledge, or industry-specific jargon. This capability ensures that agents go beyond being general-purpose assistants -- they also become experts of the data and processes of each organization. Microsoft also announced NLWeb, an open standard that can transform any website into an agentic website. It lets AI agents understand and take action on web content. "The idea behind NLWeb is it is a way for anyone who has a website -- or an API -- to very easily make their website or their API an agentic application," said Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott at the conference. It's like "HTML for the agentic web," Scott added. Microsoft is working with companies like Tripadvisor to deploy NLWeb so their websites can let AI agents search and book trips directly.

Microsoft Launches NLWeb Open-Source Agentic AI for Websites

Microsoft introduced its open-sourced agentic AI project, Natural Language Web (NLWeb), at its annual developer conference, Microsoft Build 2025. This tool aims to make content discoverability on websites easier, especially for AI agents. "Our goal is simple: help every developer build apps and agents that empower people and organizations everywhere," said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, referring to the open agentic web the company is striving to create. Microsoft defines the open agentic web as "AI agents that make decisions and perform tasks on behalf of users or organizations." These AI agents can interact with their environment, collect data, and use that data to perform self-directed tasks in order to achieve predetermined goals. Microsoft made several AI-focused announcements at Build 2025, with a special focus on agentic AI. Highlights include: Instead of requiring developers to build individual conversational interfaces for each website, Microsoft's Natural Language Web (NLWeb) allows developers to easily integrate AI-powered conversational capabilities. Because it is open-source, anyone can use NLWeb to turn a traditional website into a conversational one. Developers can choose their own models and datasets, allowing the website to function like an AI-powered search engine based on search intent rather than mere keywords. NLWeb was developed by Microsoft Technical Fellow Ramanathan V. Guha, known for his foundational work in web standards. "Just like the introduction of HTML made it easy for almost anyone to create a website, we want NLWeb to make it easy for any web publisher to create an intelligent, natural language experience for their site," reads the document from Microsoft. NLWeb functions using a special server-side standard called the Model Context Protocol (MCP), developed by Anthropic. MCP is an open-source protocol that allows websites to exchange information with AI agents -- enabling inter-agentic communication. "MCP is to NLWeb what HTTP is to HTML," reads the NLWeb documentation. Guha describes MCP as a way to ask a natural language question and receive a structured answer. "The idea is that rather than having these custom, one-on-one deals like Shopify now has with OpenAI, it's an open protocol," he added. Medianama tested NLWeb on the website Serious Eats, which Guha used as a demonstration. When asked: "I need to eat South Indian food," the AI responded with results like Railway Pakoras from Mumbai, Dosa, Indian spices, and Parathas. While some results were irrelevant and didn't fully match the user's intent, it's important to note that NLWeb relies on the AI model selected by the developer and the data provided to that model. The key issue isn't just adding LLM-powered chatbots to web pages for content discovery -- it's the autonomous nature of AI agents that can make decisions on behalf of humans. In May 2025, Visa and Mastercard announced their agentic commerce platforms -- Intelligent Commerce and AgentPay -- where AI agents can browse, select, and make payments using secure tokenized credentials. Meanwhile, Microsoft's NLWeb is already being adopted by platforms such as O'Reilly Media, Shopify, Tripadvisor, and Common Sense Media. Guha emphasized that an AI agent can remember preferences like a user being vegetarian. OpenAI's Sam Altman has stated that he wants ChatGPT to remember everything about your life -- including what you look at. Meanwhile, Perplexity AI has introduced its agentic browser, Comet, to select users on a waitlist. "Agents are going to run our lives," declared Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI. The advancement of agentic AI brings several critical concerns that need to be addressed to prevent misuse and ensure accountability: