January 18, 2023
Microsoft has announced that its Azure OpenAI service has reached the commercial-release stage of general availability and will soon be available to the general public. This is in connection with its $1 billion investment in OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
The implication is that more businesses will be able to apply to use OpenAI’s Azure-hosted and trained large language models (LLMs), such as GPT-3.5, the LLMs behind ChatGPT; DALL•E 2, the AI that generates images from casual descriptions; and Codex, the GPT-3-based foundation of GitHub’s Copilot AI paired programming service.
Meanwhile, according to the announcement, the Azure OpenAI service is currently being used in other Microsoft software products and services such as GitHub Copilot, Power BI, and Microsoft Designer. During the announcement, Microsoft boasted that Azure is the “best place to build AI workloads” for customers looking to save time on operational tasks.
Even those who provide streamlined AI-powered services to end users are not exempt. Customers, according to the company, can build AI applications on Azure by leveraging purpose-built AI-optimized infrastructure with enterprise-grade functionalities.
Microsoft did not change the requirements for prospective customers to apply for service access or to be managed customers. It also did not provide a precise release date.
The sources for this piece include an article in TheRegister.
