There is some concern and speculation on the internet that Microsoft Bing is feeding in content behind paywall and using such content to provide answers in Bing Chat. I asked Bing Chat if it can give answers based on content behind paywalls and it said no, it cannot.

But I am not sure if this answer is 100% true:

Here is one thread about Bing Chat referencing and citing content behind a paywall to provide an answer for Bing Chat:

Now, is this possible? Well, there can be answers on why Bing was able to access this content:

(1) Maybe the content was open for a period of time where it was not behind a paywall and Bing indexed it?

(2) Maybe the content provider is giving this paywalled content to Bingbot without a paywall. There are approved ways to give paywalled content to search engines, like the old first click free and flexible sampling solutions.

So technically, the content might now be behind a paywall for users but not for search engines.

So technically, Bingbot doesn’t see the paywall but users might.

That is a possible technical explanation.

Forum discussion at Twitter.