There is no longer any doubt that Open AI is the new goose that lays the golden eggs of Microsoft. This is confirmed by the announcement in which those from Redmond they have confirmed a new multi-million dollar investment on the startup which is dominating the field of artificial intelligence thanks to GPT-3.5, DALL-E 2 and ChatGPT, among other developments.
Several details of the new agreement between the parties have not been publicly disclosed. In the last weeks, Microsoft was rumored to be interested in investing $10 billion in OpenAI, but no specific figures were released. Although those led by Satya Nadella have spoken of a bet that involves several billion dollars in a multi-year agreement. Its duration is also unknown, at least for now.
The new stage of the relationship between Microsoft and the creators of ChatGPT and DALL-E 2 is based on three pillars. On the one hand, those of Redmond will be exclusive providers of cloud services for OpenAI through Azure. In addition, they will implement all the artificial intelligence models of the firm led by Sam Altman in all its products for consumers and companies.
The foregoing had already been glimpsed last week with the announcement of the opening of the Azure OpenAI service. But the story does not end there, since Microsoft is rumored to be planning to integrate ChatGPT into Bing and Office 365. Nadella himself had stated that, in one way or another, all of its products will integrate some type of AI-based tool that will transform them. completely.
The last pillar of the agreement is that Microsoft will expand its infrastructure of supercomputers powered by Azureso that OpenAI continues to train its artificial intelligence models.
Microsoft does all in with OpenAI, and you have everything to win
As we already mentioned, the most important details of this new agreement are still a mystery. According to recent rumors, Microsoft would receive 75% of the revenue from OpenAI until its investment is recovered. And once said objective is met, he would remain the owner of 49% of the startup of artificial intelligence. Another 49% would remain in the hands of different investors, while the remaining 2% would be controlled by OpenAI Inc., the non-profit parent company of the laboratory.
If the terms really are these, the union between Microsoft and OpenAI is guaranteed for several years. Analysts stipulate that the income of the creators of ChatGPT would reach 1,000 million dollars only in 2024. In addition, it is estimated that the company closed 2022 with losses of more than 500 million dollars; especially for the operational costs generated by the launches of DALL-E 2 and its chatbot of AI.
The strengthening of the alliance between Microsoft and OpenAI is also a headache for other large corporations. Although perhaps the most affected is Google. Those from Mountain View have tried to calm their own employees, indicating that today they do not have plans to launch a ChatGPT competitor; and that they are very confident in their progress in the field of artificial intelligence.
However, the story would have nuances. Although Google has made notable progress in this area, especially thanks to LaMDA, its natural language model, the company fears that its ads will lose relevance by not having a direct interaction tool with the public, as OpenAI does with your chatbot. In recent days, it was even known that the Californian firm summoned its founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, to help clear the way.
Address the controversy
Thanks to the viral impact of OpenAI, today Microsoft seems to have outperformed its rivals in the implementation of artificial intelligence solutions. But the ones from Redmond now too will have to deal with the controversy surrounding these types of developments.
The most notorious case is that Sam Altman’s firm is taking advantage of labor exploitation in Kenya to improve ChatGPT. According to an investigation, the startup is outsourcing workers in said country to make the AI less toxic. An arduous task that involves manually classifying and filtering content related to homicides, suicides, incest, torture, and child sexual abuse. All for wages of up to $2 an hour..
In the case of DALL-E 2, meanwhile, it must face an increasingly challenging panorama in the sector. Let’s not forget that, days ago, Midjourney, a rival generative AI, was sued for copyright infringement. situation that set a precedent which could affect other similar platforms.