Microsoft has said it will add OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT to its cloud-based Azure service “soon”, the media has reported. This comes days after Microsoft was said to be in discussions with ChatGPT creator OpenAI to invest $10 billion, after a discussion that has been going on for months.
Microsoft announced the broad availability of its Azure OpenAI Service, which has been available to a limited set of customers since it was unveiled in 2021. The service gives Microsoft’s cloud customers access to various OpenAI tools like the GPT-3.5 language system that ChatGPT is based on, as well as the Dall-E model for generating images from text prompts, the company said in a blog post, first reported by news agency Bloomberg.
The software giant is already an OpenAI partner, thanks to a $1 billion investment in 2019. It is now looking to get an inside edge on the most popular and advanced AI systems in order to boost its own products in competition with rival Alphabet’s Google, Facebook parent Meta and Amazon.com.
To recall, last week’s report said that Microsoft will invest the total amount over several years and the final terms of the deal haven’t been finalised yet. San Francisco-headquartered OpenAI is expected to be valued at $29 billion, owing to potential investments that could involve other venture firms.
Launched as a prototype on November 30 last year, ChatGPT became popular among netizens because of its simple UI and easy approach to solving problems. To use ChatGPT, all you need to do is visit chat.openai.com, register with your mail ID, and type in your query in the textbox that appears. Owing to the overall simplicity of ChatGPT, Microsoft is also working to add the chatbot to its search engine, Bing — primarily in order to take on Alphabet’s Google. For now, neither Microsoft nor OpenAI have offered a confirmation.
