Microsoft has announced that it is adding ChatGPT to the suite of solutions that can be integrated into its Azure Cloud Service.
In a blog post published on Thursday, the company said that over 1,000 customers have applied to access the Azure OpenAI service – which gives them the possibility of integrating any of the many AI models created by this company.
How Much Will Companies Pay to Access the Microsoft Azure ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is just the latest addition to the portfolio as other powerful models from the company founded by Sam Altman are already available on Azure as is the case of Dall-E, Codex, and GPT 3.5.
The use cases of ChatGPT for Azure customers are quite extensive going from producing summaries of sales meetings to drafting e-mail templates for marketing campaigns.
It can also come up with preliminary answers to both basic and complex support tickets.
Microsoft will charge $0.002 for every 1,000 ChatGPT tokens, the equivalent of approximately 750 words.
It is the same price charged by OpenAI itself for developers who opt to use the recently-launched company’s application programming interface (API).
Some early adopters of Microsoft’s Azure-based ChatGPT include The Office Depot and Icertis.
Developers still have to apply to get access to the solution as Microsoft (MSFT) and even OpenAI have not opened up access to the general public.
That is due to the significant computing power required to process users’ text prompts and come up with an appropriate answer.
Is Microsoft’s Cloud Infrastructure Prepared to Support the AI Hype?
Some reports have pointed out that other cloud providers such – as Amazon AWS – have struggled to meet the growing demand from customers.
There has been rapid incorporation of AI models into their software and platforms since the end of 2022.
Microsoft’s careful steps when it comes to the release of these solutions, and the progressive launch of their suite of AI-powered solutions, suggest that the company is following a careful blueprint.
The launch of ChatGPT by OpenAI may be considered the epicenter of the latest AI hype but it does not seem to have caught Microsoft unprepared.
The difference between accessing OpenAI’s services directly with the company is that customers miss some of the security and compatibility features that Azure offers.
“Azure OpenAI co-develops the APIs with OpenAI, ensuring compatibility and a smooth transition from one to the other,” Microsoft comments in one of its technical materials.
“With Azure OpenAI, customers get the security capabilities of Microsoft Azure while running the same models as OpenAI. Azure OpenAI offers private networking, regional availability, and responsible AI content filtering.”
Microsoft Could Soon Share More Detail About the AI-Powered MS Office
A number of prominent tech companies have already deployed solutions that are powered by OpenAI’s generative AI technology – including Snapchat, which recently launched a friendly virtual assistant called My AI.
Salesforce is another example as the company recently incorporated ChatGPT-powered tools for both Slack and its flagship customer relationship management (CRM) platform.
In the latter case, users can leverage the power of artificial intelligence for multiple purposes including refining the data associated with leads, fine-tuning the content that will go into a marketing campaign, and even getting assistance to deploy new code.
The next step for Microsoft at this point is to incorporate generative AI into its legacy productivity solution Office 365.
An event is scheduled to take place on March 16, with the company expected to reveal the next generation of MS Office products that will harness the power of AI.
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