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Microsoft has announced the general availability of its Azure OpenAI service, which includes AI writer tools such as GPT-3.5, Codex and DALL-E 2, in a move it hopes will democratize artificial intelligence technologies and make them more readily available to more customers.
The technology giant debuted Azure OpenAI Service in November 2021, offering a combination of some of the most powerful AI tools we’ve come to know with the hallmarks of Azure, such as security, reliability, compliance, and data privacy.
In just a few months, the Azure platform claims to have freed up employee time by generating things like support ticket summaries and generating more relevant content for online shoppers.
Microsoft Azure OpenAI service
Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI – the company behind the popular GPT model – and has reportedly invested another $2 billion since then The New York Times (opens in new tab).
Fast forward to 2023 and the company would be preparing a major $10 billion investment in the company and integrating its AI into more Microsoft services, including its Bing search engine.
“We have taken an iterative approach to large models, working closely with our partner OpenAI and our customers to carefully assess use cases, learn and address potential risks,” explains Microsoft AI Platform corporate VP, Eric Boyd. in a blog post (opens in new tab).
Some measures to protect users include the requirement for developers to request access and further content filters.
While enthusiast users can now request Azure OpenAI Service, The register (opens in new tab) has highlighted the apparent lack of general availability, making it available only in four US-based Azure regions and the Western Europe region, which he says is due to the large amount of effort required to deploy low-latency AI globally to make available.