OpenAI has been nearing a dead end with it’s finanical crunches for a while now, and it seems like Microsoft is the first one to hammer the nail on its coffin. Even though they opened up the global tier subscription-based ChatGPT models, OpenAI has been on a downhill towards losses amounting to $14 billion.
Even though Microsoft still holds a major portion of rights for the OpenAI IPs, the numbers did generate some decision-making reactions. Now, to add salt to the burn, Microsoft has formally announced a strategic shift away from external models such as ChatGPT in favour of its own AI models.
It’s no secret that Sam Altman’s AI company and Microsoft have been facing a growing distance between each other. Even though Microsoft has shown great strides to introduce new AI tools powered by the same model as ChatGPT, such as its own Copilot. The attempt has proven to have missed its mark on the general consumers.
Chief of Microsoft’s AI announced this new decision
Despite all the shortcomings, it was noted that both companies were working to devise future plans with steadiness. But it seems like the plan all along on Microsoft’s side was to distance itself from OpenAI.
Speaking with Financial Times, The cheif of Microsoft’s AI, Mustafa Suleyman, confirmed the news himself. He hinted at ‘self-sufficiency’ as a key term when making this shift post October’s restructuring of the partnership with OpenAI.
“We have to develop our own foundation models, which are at the absolute frontier, with gigawatt-scale compute and some of the very best AI training teams in the world,” Said Suleyman.
Microsoft has invested up to over $13 billion in OpenAI with atleast 27% in stake. As of recent standings, the invested value is roughly around $135 billion. But the company has also made investments in some of OpenAI’s competitors, such as Anthropic and Mistral.
With this new announcement, they will be announcing themselves as direct competitors to their own investments. Amidst all the bad news, Sam Altman continues to burn through money with the model, while always looking for more investments.
The fight between scepticism and the betterment of humanity
As the losses pile up, more big tech companies are starting lean towards further scepticism, trying to predict what the future of AI as a whole might look like. Meanwhile, the general public’s reception of AI remains negative.
Microsoft had to be the biggest example for that while being the face of the whole ‘microslop’ meme backlash, because of the company frequently trying to shove their AI tools down the user’s throat.
Mustafa Suleyman was very particular about the types of applications their AI will focus on, which will ‘benefit humanity’. Significantly leaning towards improving healthcare technology, which can gain autonomy to some extent.
The end users will still remain sceptical as the working force keeps taking hits and ethical concerns keep piling up. All the while, this technology does not seem to be stopping. Microsoft still has legs in this uphill battle, trying to convince the consumers. But the same cannot be said for OpenAI at the moment.
