Microsoft to expand investment in OpenAI, will open up access to ChatGPT for users

Microsoft Corp on Monday announced that it would be expanding its investment in OpenAI, and will be investing more into the AI bots that they are making, as it plans to allow more and more users access to their hugely popular software ChatGPT. Previously, Microsoft has hinted to combine their search engine Bing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT to create a search engine that would take on Google and challenge its dominant position.

ChatGPT has to be one of the biggest tech hits of 2022 has found users across all sorts of businesses and professions. From being used as a personal secretary to being used by mental health advocates in counselling patients, the service has proven to be a massive hit, despite some of its glaring shortcomings.

Microsoft said that the startup’s technology, which it had previously shown off to its cloud computing users in a programme it named the Azure OpenAI Service, was now widely available. This development is expected to result in a number of new applications and use case scenarios coming up.

The information comes at a time when Microsoft has considered increasing the $1 billion stake in OpenAI that it revealed in 2019 according to two people with knowledge of the situation. Earlier this month, the news outlet Semafor indicated that Microsoft may make a $10 billion investment; Microsoft declined to comment on any prospective agreements.

Following the introduction of ChatGPT in November public interest in OpenAI skyrocketed. The technology that powers ChatGPT generative AI, which creates new content after training on enormous quantities of data, is one that Microsoft is allowing additional clients to apply to use.

Microsoft said in a blog post that ChatGPT itself, not just the underlying technology, will soon be accessible through the cloud.

Microsoft said that it is screening client apps for possible software abuse and that its filters can check for hazardous information that users could enter or that the technology itself might create.

At a time when financing is otherwise scarce, the commercial potential of such software has attracted significant venture capital investment in firms generating it. Some businesses have already used the technology to illustrate how it might negotiate a cable bill or develop marketing content.

CarMax, KPMG, and other companies, according to Microsoft, use its Azure OpenAI service. An Al Jazeera vice president was reported in the press statement as noting that the tool might aid the news organisation with content translation and summarization.