Microsoft announces plans to offer ChatGPT-as-a-service from Azure

Microsoft has revealed that it will “soon” add ChatGPT AI chatbot to its Azure cloud computing service. Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI has been in the works since 2019 and the software giant has announced that the service has opened up for general availability (GA).

The Azure OpenAI currently offers a range of AI solutions including GPT-3.5, Codex, and DALL-E. But, Microsoft says it will soon add ChatGPT.

The company says that the decision is a sign of its "continued commitment to democratising AI, and ongoing partnership with OpenAI."

In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion into OpenAI and which has played a key role in taking the AI startup mainstream. Part of the deal involved the development of Azure AI supercomputing technologies. News have emerged recently that Microsoft is eyeing a more significant stake in OpenAI. Reports suggest that Microsoft is in talks to invest an additional $10 billion in OpenAI in a deal that will see the software giant control a 49% stake in the AI business.

Microsoft is also said to be considering adding ChatGPT to its Bing in a move to revamp the search engine that has been strangled off the market by Google.

At the time of writing this, the Azure AI service is only accessible in four US-based Azure regions and the West Europe region. It may be a while before Microsoft makes the service global and ensures that customers have access to low-latency AI.

Microsoft supervises the use of Azure AI and so developers that use the service to add AI functionality to their app will have to adhere to its set guidelines. “Prompts and completions are evaluated against our content policy with automated systems. High severity content will be filtered,” reads the service’s policy document.