San Francisco, Jan 24 (UiTV/IANS) – Microsoft on Monday announced a multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI, the developer behind AI-driven ChatGPT which has become a rage.
The tech giant, which infused $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019, did not divulge the investment amount in the “third phase of our long-term partnership with OpenAI”. Earlier reports had claimed Microsoft may infuse up to $10 billion in OpenAI.
“We formed our partnership with OpenAI around a shared ambition to responsibly advance cutting-edge AI research and democratise AI as a new technology platform,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft.
“In this next phase of our partnership, developers and organisations across industries will have access to the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchain with Azure to build and run their applications,” Nadella added.
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Microsoft will now increase its investments in the development and deployment of specialised supercomputing systems to accelerate OpenAI’s groundbreaking independent AI research.
It will deploy OpenAI’s models across its consumer and enterprise products and introduce new categories of digital experiences built on OpenAI’s technology.
This includes Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service which empowers developers to build cutting-edge AI applications through direct access to OpenAI models, said the tech giant.
“The past three years of our partnership have been great,” said Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
“Microsoft shares our values and we are excited to continue our independent research and work toward creating advanced AI that benefits everyone,” he added.
As OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider, Azure will power all OpenAI workloads across research, products and API services.
ChatGPT’s paid version available for $42 a month for some early users
Some ChatGPT users on Monday posted on social media that they have been granted access to a “ChatGPT Professional” version which costs $42 a month.
OpenAI, the Microsoft-owned AI company that developed the sensational chatbot, was yet to confirm the pricing.
AI developer Zahid Khawaja posted the screenshot of ChatGPT pricing, showing $42 per month. He said that paid system responds faster than the free version.
However, another Twitter user posted that “I very much wanted to pay for a plan but 42$ is just too much”.
AI research organisation OpenAI has said it will soon monetise its ChatGPT platform, after seeing a mammoth response to its AI chatbot that can write poems, essays, emails and even codes.
The Microsoft-owned company said it is “starting to think about how to monetize ChatGPT” as a way to “ensure long-term viability.”
“Working on a professional version of ChatGPT; will offer higher limits and faster performance,” said Greg Brockman, President and Co-Founder, OpenAI.
ChatGPT last reported over a million users.
ChatGPT Professional will be always available (no blackout windows), fast responses from ChatGPT (no throttling) and as many messages as you need (at least 2X regular daily limit).
“If you are selected, we’ll reach out to you to set up a payment process and a pilot. Please keep in mind that this is an early experimental programme that is subject to change, and we are not making paid pro access generally available at this time,” said the company.
Meanwhile, reports surfaced that Microsoft is planning to infuse $10 billion into OpenAI that will value the company at nearly $29 billion.
