Microsoft announced multi-year, multibillion-dollar investments in artificial intelligence (AI) expanding its partnership with OpenAI.
OpenAI is the creator of the popular imaging tool Dall-E and the ChatGPT chatbot.
In 2019, Microsoft invested $1bn (£808m) in the company founded by Elon Musk and tech investor Sam Altman.
The Windows and Xbox maker plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs, but said it will still hire in key strategic areas.
Announcing the news in a memo to employees last week, CEO Satya Nadella said, “The next big wave of computing is being born, with an emphasis on AI.”
In announcing the expanded partnership, the firm said artificial intelligence will have an “influence across the personal computer, the Internet, mobile devices and the cloud.”
“Red Code”
ChatGPT OpenAI is able to provide convincing human answers to questions.
Speculation about the technology’s potential misuse, from helping students flunk exams to writing malware, has gone hand-in-hand with speculation that it could revolutionize many industries, including search.
Microsoft owns the Bing search engine, and while it lags behind Google in popularity, some suggest that ChatGPT poses a threat to the industry leader.
The New York Times reported that this prompted Google to announce a “code red” over fears it could allow competitors to “eat” the firm’s $149 billion search business.
In the past, Google has refrained from releasing some AI systems for general use.
The firm cited “ethical issues” for not releasing its Imagen image generation system.
The researchers say there is a risk that a system that learns from data collected from the internet will learn “harmful stereotypes and perceptions”.
Blue sky
Microsoft said it is committed to “creating artificial intelligence systems and products that are reliable and secure.”
The company said it will use OpenAI technology “in our consumer and enterprise products.”
In addition to ChatGPT, the firm also makes Dall-E, which generates images in response to simple text instructions, and GitHub Copilot, a system that uses AI to write computer code.
Microsoft has said that its Azure cloud computing platform will continue to use OpenAI.
Earlier reports said Microsoft was considering investing an additional $10 billion in OpenAI, but the company’s announcement did not provide a figure for the scale of the investment.
