Azure OpenAI Now Available For Developers

Microsoft has announced the general availability of Azure OpenAI Service as part of its continued commitment to democratizing AI, and ongoing partnership with OpenAI.

Businesses can now apply for access to Azure OpenAI Service AI models including GPT-3.5, Codex, and DALL E 2 to create applications. They will be able to access ChatGPT—a fine-tuned version of GPT-3.5 that has been trained and runs inference on Azure AI infrastructure soon.

“ChatGPT is coming soon to the Azure OpenAI Service, which is now generally available, as we help customers apply the world’s most advanced AI models to their own business imperatives,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO said in a tweet.

Microsoft debuted Azure OpenAI Service in November 2021 to enable customers to tap into the power of large-scale generative AI models. Azure has since been used by organisations for customer support, customization and gaining insights from data using search, data extraction, and classification.

Microsoft uses Azure to power its own products, including GitHub Copilot, an AI pair programmer that helps developers write better code, Power BI, which leverages GPT-3-powered natural language to automatically generate formulae and expressions.

Azure is also the core computing power behind OpenAI API’s family of models for research advancement and developer productivity.

Microsoft is reportedly in discussion to purchase a 49 per cent stake worth $10 billion in OpenAI. The funding conditions stipulate Microsoft would acquire a 49 per cent stake in OpenAI, the other 49 per cent shared by other investors. The OpenAI parent nonprofit remains with 2 per cent.