Microsoft has confirmed it plans to make a “multibillion-dollar” investment in OpenAI, the company behind a new viral AI chatbot called ChatGPT.
Microsoft, which is an early investor in OpenAI, said in a blog post that it plans to expand its existing partnership with the company, making a greater effort to add more AI to its product portfolio.
In a blog post, the company said the multiyear investment will be used to “develop increasingly safe, useful, and powerful AI.” “We formed our partnership with OpenAI with a shared ambition to responsibly advance AI research, make it cutting edge, and democratize it as a new technology platform,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement.
The deepening partnership between the two companies has the potential to enhance OpenAI’s ambitious projects, including ChatGPT, which has caught the attention of (and raised concerns from) academics, business leaders and tech enthusiasts for its ability to create long, complete responses to user requests and questions.
The investment could also catapult Microsoft into the ranks of AI leaders and ultimately pave the way for the company to embed ChatGPT into some of its core applications, such as Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. As a result of its existing exclusive agreement with OpenAI, Microsoft recently said it would soon add ChatGPT capabilities to its cloud computing service, Azure. If ChatGPT becomes available on that service, businesses could also use the tools directly within its apps and services.
The OpenAI investment comes just days after Microsoft announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures. Nadella said at the time that the company will continue to invest in “strategic areas for our future” and called AI advances “the next big wave” in computing.
Since OpenAI opened up ChatGPT in late November, it has been used to write articles (with several factual and objective inaccuracies) for at least one news publication; written lyrics in the style of several artists (one of whom later responded, “this song sucks”); and drafted abstracts for research papers that have misled some scientists.
Some CEOs have also already used the platform to write emails or do accounting work.
OpenAI is also the creator of DALL-E, an AI model that generates a seemingly limitless array of images from a user’s text description. Both DALL-E and ChatGPT are trained on large amounts of data to generate the content.
There are also risks to be aware of for Microsoft and OpenAI. While these products have gained a lot of popularity among users, they have also raised some concerns, including their potential to perpetuate bias and spread misinformation.
At the same time, a growing number of schools and teachers are concerned about the immediate impact ChatGPT has had on students and their ability to cheat on homework. This could potentially create “very bad publicity” for the companies associated with these tools, said David Lobina, an AI analyst at ABI Research.
The opportunity is immense, however, and could strengthen Microsoft’s position in the growing AI development race and provide a useful boost to OpenAI in the process. “OpenAI is trying to monetize their systems, given the enormous computational costs of building these models,” Lobina told CNN. “Their partnership with Microsoft may be an easy way to do that.”
Microsoft has confirmed it plans to make a “multibillion-dollar” investment in OpenAI, the company behind a new viral AI chatbot called ChatGPT.
Microsoft, which is an early investor in OpenAI, said in a blog post that it plans to expand its existing partnership with the company, making a greater effort to add more AI to its product portfolio.
In a blog post, the company said the multiyear investment will be used to “develop increasingly safe, useful, and powerful AI.” “We formed our partnership with OpenAI with a shared ambition to responsibly advance AI research, make it cutting edge, and democratize it as a new technology platform,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement.
The deepening partnership between the two companies has the potential to enhance OpenAI’s ambitious projects, including ChatGPT, which has caught the attention of (and raised concerns from) academics, business leaders and tech enthusiasts for its ability to create long, complete responses to user requests and questions.
The investment could also catapult Microsoft into the ranks of AI leaders and ultimately pave the way for the company to embed ChatGPT into some of its core applications, such as Word, PowerPoint and Outlook. As a result of its existing exclusive agreement with OpenAI, Microsoft recently said it would soon add ChatGPT capabilities to its cloud computing service, Azure. If ChatGPT becomes available on that service, businesses could also use the tools directly within its apps and services.
The OpenAI investment comes just days after Microsoft announced plans to lay off 10,000 employees as part of broader cost-cutting measures. Nadella said at the time that the company will continue to invest in “strategic areas for our future” and called AI advances “the next big wave” in computing.
Since OpenAI opened up ChatGPT in late November, it has been used to write articles (with several factual and objective inaccuracies) for at least one news publication; written lyrics in the style of several artists (one of whom later responded, “this song sucks”); and drafted abstracts for research papers that have misled some scientists.
Some CEOs have also already used the platform to write emails or do accounting work. OpenAI is also the creator of DALL-E, an AI model that generates a seemingly limitless array of images from a user’s text description. Both DALL-E and ChatGPT are trained on large amounts of data to generate the content.
There are also risks to be aware of for Microsoft and OpenAI. While these products have gained a lot of popularity among users, they have also raised some concerns, including their potential to perpetuate bias and spread misinformation.
At the same time, a growing number of schools and teachers are concerned about the immediate impact ChatGPT has had on students and their ability to cheat on homework. This could potentially create “very bad publicity” for the companies associated with these tools, said David Lobina, an AI analyst at ABI Research.
The opportunity is immense, however, and could strengthen Microsoft’s position in the growing AI development race and provide a useful boost to OpenAI in the process. “OpenAI is trying to monetize their systems, given the enormous computational costs of building these models,” Lobina told CNN. “Their partnership with Microsoft may be an easy way to do that.”