After a long and complicated history, Microsoft’s relationship with the artificial intelligence organization OpenAI has just gotten more complex than ever. Microsoft has spent a reported $13 billion on the ChatGPT producer in the context of a long-lasting partnership. The deal included Microsoft running OpenAI’s models throughout its business and customer products, and it is OpenAI's exclusive cloud supplier.
However, on Tuesday, Microsoft included the artificial intelligence startup on their register of main competitors in Microsoft’s most recent annual report. The Microsoft list is an inventory that from long ago contained the industry titans Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta, and Anthropic.
But in this year’s filing, Microsoft surprisingly points out OpenAI, the ChatGPT chatbot developer, as a rival in AI contributions, research, and news advertising. This also comes in the context of OpenAI announcing a model of a search engine named SearchGPT.
OpenAI was chosen by some companies to be paid for accessing its models, while others decided to use Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service. For people who are searching for a substitute to the OpenAI ChatGPT, Microsoft also has a chatbot named Copilot which is accessible across the Bing search engine and in Windows operating systems.
Despite the news, a Microsoft representative declared that the relationship between the OpenAI artificial intelligence startup and Microsoft was not altered, and their alliance was founded based on the fact that they would compete in the AI field. The representative also stated clearly that Microsoft would remain a good associate with OpenAI.
Nevertheless, 2024 has been a drastic year. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, wasn't previously informed about the OpenAI’s November board verdict of excluding Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO. After Altman reestablished his position, OpenAI offered Microsoft an abstention board seat. Microsoft abandoned the position earlier this month.
Satya Nadella brought in March Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of DeepMind, an AI research company that antecedent OpenAI and was bought by Google in 2014. Mustafa Suleyman, who was co-associated with the Inflection AI startup, was named CEO of a new Microsoft detachment called Microsoft AI, and a few Infection workers joined him.
Associates and competitors are definitely not mutually private titles in Silicon Valley. More than two decades ago, Yahoo, the main search engine at the time, reported an arrangement to let Google’s search findings show up on its web page. The two companies were associated for a couple of years until Google ate Yahoo’s lunch in search and turned the unconfirmed, but principal, doorway to the internet. Yahoo and Microsoft were partners but were still competition to each other.