Microsoft to Incorporate ChatGPT into Azure Cloud Services in the Near Future

Microsoft Corp. announced that it will be adding OpenAI's popular artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT to its Azure cloud service. This move builds on an existing relationship between the two companies, and Microsoft is considering taking a larger stake in OpenAI.

Microsoft has announced that its Azure OpenAI Service is now available to all customers, after being in limited release since 2021. The service gives Microsoft cloud customers access to various OpenAI tools, including the GPT-3.5 language system that ChatGPT is based on, as well as the Dall-E model for generating images from text prompts. This enables Azure customers to use the OpenAI products in their own applications running in the cloud.

Microsoft, which has already invested $1 billion in OpenAI, is looking to get an inside edge on the most popular and advanced AI systems. This would give Microsoft a boost in competition against Alphabet Inc.'s Google, Amazon.com Inc., and Meta Platforms Inc.

Since launching at the end of November, ChatGPT has been a hit with internet users, gathering its first million users in less than a week. Its imitation of human conversation has sparked speculation about its potential to replace professional writers and even threaten Google’s core search business. The organization behind it, co-founded by Elon Musk and Silicon Valley investor Sam Altman, makes money by charging developers to license its technology.

OpenAI's new technology comes at the end of a year of headline-grabbing advances in AI. The company's Dall-E - which accepts written prompts to synthesize art and other images - also gave rise to a broad debate about the infusion of AI into creative industries. OpenAI is already working on a successor GPT-4 model for its natural language processing.

Still, concerns about the accuracy of ChatGPT have prompted caution about its premature use, and New York City schools have banned its students from accessing it.

Microsoft is currently using OpenAI's Codex to add automation to its GitHub unit's Copilot programming tool. The company is also adding this feature to Azure, along with other OpenAI tools. Microsoft wants to adopt even more OpenAI technology in its Bing search engine, Office productivity applications, Teams chat program and security software.