Microsoft makes its Azure OpenAI Service, announced in 2021, broadly available, giving users access to the GPT-3.5 language model, DALL-E 2, and ChatGPT “soon”
Microsoft Corp. said it will add OpenAI's viral artificial intelligence bot ChatGPT to its cloud-based Azure service …
BloombergDina Bass
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft’s Azure route to OpenAI models began with an exclusive GPT-3 licensing arrangement and then a select-business preview in which OpenAI continued to sell its own API with newer upgrades. Broad availability turns that limited Azure offering into a standard cloud-service channel for GPT-3.5 and DALL-E 2.
Azure customers can now obtain GPT-3.5 and DALL-E 2 through Microsoft’s broadly available service rather than needing to be among the earlier invited businesses.
Microsoft gains a wider cloud-sales path for OpenAI models, while OpenAI’s separately sold API remains a parallel route for customers seeking its latest upgrades.
Second-order effects
Developers and businesses evaluating OpenAI models gain a choice between Azure’s hosted channel and OpenAI’s direct API, putting model availability and upgrade timing at the center of platform selection.
The later ChatGPT launch on Azure extends the service from text generation and image generation toward conversational features that customers can embed in their own applications.
Third-order effects
If Microsoft continues to move new OpenAI models from restricted access to broad Azure availability, model access becomes a differentiated cloud-platform capability rather than a standalone API purchase.
The pattern points to AI infrastructure platformization: cloud providers increasingly package foundation-model access as part of the developer environment where applications are built and operated.
The trend: Foundation models are moving from limited previews and direct APIs into broadly available cloud platforms that control enterprise distribution.
We've learned a lot from the ChatGPT research preview and have been making important updates based on user feedback. ChatGPT will be coming to our API and Microsoft's Azure OpenAI Service soon. Sign up for updates here: https://share.hsforms.com/...
ChatGPT is coming soon to the Azure OpenAI Service, which is now generally available, as we help customers apply the world's most advanced AI models to their own business imperatives. https://azure.microsoft.com/ ...
Just in—new AI models on Azure OpenAI Service empower your business to deliver results at scale. Explore the possibilities → https://azure.microsoft.com/ ... #AzureOpenAI https://twitter.com/...
“Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate that the higher cost of natural language processing means that answering a query using ChatGPT costs around seven times as much as a typical internet search.” https://www.ft.com/...
At this point, it's almost silly if Google Cloud does not offer PaLM or one of the many many models they have working internally. https://twitter.com/...
Glad to see this called out “As part of our Limited Access Framework, developers are required to apply for access, describing their intended use case or application before they are given access to the service” #responsibleAI is gonna be even more key with generative models https:…
I've said this before, I'll say it again: Satya's early investment in OpenAI is sheer Hall of Fame stuff. He now has the first mover advantage in an entire new market and has positioned Microsoft as the de-facto leader of the most pre-eminent emerging technology. 🙇♀️ https://twi…
And thus Google becomes free to offer LaMDA, flan-PaLM and more through GCP on its TPUs. Going to be a hard road for LLM companies to convince investors they can compete against Google and Microsoft when both are focusing here. Unless... https://twitter.com/...
“The potential upheaval this could cause in the software world has not been lost on Microsoft's rivals, who see the technology as a rare opportunity to break into markets dominated by Big Tech.” https://www.ft.com/...
Perhaps the only semi-surprising thing about this announcement is the speed with which these amazing AI systems are moving into general availability. 3/9
As one of the most unsurprising moves in tech, @Microsoft has announced that they will incorporate all of @OpenAI tools into their products. In particular, this means a wide availability of ChatGPT in various Office products. 1/9
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella discussed the Activision deal briefly today. “If you believe in competition, you should believe in this deal. I hope the competition authorities get focused more on competition and that would be a good day.” https://www.wsj.com/... https://twitter.com/…