Microsoft says OpenAI is now a competitor in AI and search
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, right, greets OpenAI CEO Sam Altman during the OpenAI DevDay event in San Francisco on November 6, 2023.
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Microsoft‘s relationship with OpenAI has officially become more complicated.
Microsoft on Tuesday added the artificial intelligence startup to its list of competitors within the company. latest annual report. This is a list that has for years included large-cap peers Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta.
Microsoft has a long-standing partnership with OpenAI, serving as its exclusive cloud provider and using its AI models in products for commercial and consumer customers. Microsoft is biggest investor at OpenAI, after pouring $13 billion into the company.
But the new cast shows they’re slowly moving into each other’s territory.
In the filing, Microsoft identified OpenAI, the creator of the ChatGPT chatbot, as a competitor in AI services and in search and news advertising. Last week, OpenAI announced The prototype of the search engine was called SearchGPT.
Some companies choose to pay OpenAI for access to their models. Others use Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service. For those looking for an alternative to ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot is also available through the Bing search engine and on Windows.
An OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC that nothing has changed about the relationship between the two companies and that their partnership was established with the understanding that they would compete. The spokesperson said Microsoft remains a good partner of OpenAI.
However, it was still a dramatic year.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella reported was not notified before OpenAI’s board of directors pushed out CEO Sam Altman in November. After Altman was quickly reinstated, OpenAI gave Microsoft a non-voting board seat. Microsoft gave up position earlier this month.
In March, Nadella bring about Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind, an AI research company that predates OpenAI and was acquired by Google in 2014. Suleyman, who co-founded and led the startup Inflection AI, was named CEO of a new unit called Microsoft AI, and several Inflection employees joined him.
Nadella remains close to Altman.
“One of the things I love about Sam is that every day he calls me and says, ‘I need more, I need more, I need more,’” Nadella told The New York Times in a recent interview.
