In recent days,
Microsoft has reportedly been in talks with
OpenAI , an
artificial intelligence company
known for offering a large number of freely available and/or open-source AI models. While no agreement has yet been reached, the two companies are in discussions regarding a potential new investment in OpenAI by Microsoft.
Microsoft relies on OpenAI to integrate AI into its products and services
Founded in 2015 by Elon Musk and Sam Altman, among others, OpenAI is valued at over $20 billion, according to The Information and The Wall Street Journal . Even though the company is far from wanting to be acquired, this hasn’t stopped several tech players from approaching it for various reasons.
In 2019, Microsoft invested nearly a billion dollars to develop new AI-based technologies. In return, Microsoft, through Azure, became OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider. A few months later, a new supercomputer built exclusively for OpenAI was launched, and simultaneously, the Californian company secured exclusive rights to GPT-3 , one of the world’s most comprehensive language models with 175 billion parameters .
Thanks to this, Microsoft gives its users access to a tool for coding in natural language, and facilitates access to this model for developing low-code applications on Azure with OpenAI APIs. Later, in 2021, the tech giant even announced that it had designed an NLP model more efficient than GPT-3 in collaboration with NVIDIA.
OpenAI is making a splash with DALL-E 2, which is attracting Microsoft’s attention.
OpenAI, for its part, recently made headlines with DALL-E 2, an AI model that allows users to enlarge a previously provided image using a text description. While the tool was initially in beta , the company has removed the waiting list, allowing anyone to sign up . Today, nearly 2 million people are reportedly using this technology.
In a blog post , Liat Ben-Zur, one of Microsoft’s vice presidents, highlighted OpenAI’s work. ” The deployment of DALL∙E 2 across Microsoft products and services reflects how the company’s investment in AI research helps to thoughtfully integrate AI into everything it builds, produces, and delivers to help everyone drive productivity and innovation .”
It’s worth noting that Google, along with Alphabet, and even Microsoft have also developed image generators that use text. Microsoft, which is increasingly focused on integrating AI into its range of products and services, has therefore entered into negotiations with OpenAI in recent weeks. For now, no figures have been disclosed, and the amount invested by Satya Nadella’s company may change depending on the expectations of both parties.
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