Microsoft Considering AI Models to Replace OpenAI's in Copilot
Microsoft is reportedly testing artificial intelligence (AI) models from other companies that could replace OpenAI's models in Copilot. The tech giant is also training models that could compete directly with OpenAI's, both for use in Copilot and for sale to outside developers who could add them to their own apps, as reported by Reuters citing a paywalled article from The Information that cited unnamed sources. Microsoft has completed training of a family of models that perform nearly as well as OpenAI's leading models on commonly accepted benchmarks, according to the report.
Diversifying Technology and Reducing Costs
Microsoft, a major backer of OpenAI, has benefited from its early partnership with the company but has been looking to diversify its technology and reduce its costs. Accordingly, in August, Microsoft added OpenAI to its list of competitors in its fiscal 2024 report. Microsoft counts OpenAI among its competitors in the search and news advertising fields, along with Google and various social media platforms.
Dynamics of the Partnership
While the relationship between the two firms has been critical, with Microsoft turning to OpenAI for help in building AI systems and providing financial backing, the companies' desire to tap a greater share of the AI market put them at odds. Microsoft disclosed in a January blog post that it would no longer be OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider for its AI models, and instead would have the right of first refusal to host OpenAI's AI workloads in Azure. This marked a change in their 2019 agreement, when Microsoft became OpenAI's exclusive cloud provider after investing $1 billion in OpenAI.
At the same time, the blog post said Microsoft would retain the exclusive rights to OpenAI's application programming interface (API), which is how most companies access and integrate the startup's AI models into their own applications, products, or services.
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