Microsoft was an early investor in OpenAI, the AI research company behind ChatGPT, long before ChatGPT was released to the public. Microsoft’s first involvement with OpenAI was in 2019 when Microsoft invested $1 billion, and then $2 billion in the years after. In January, Microsoft extended its partnership with OpenAI through a multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment.
Also: How to use Bing Image Creator (and why it’s better than DALL-E 2)
Neither company disclosed the investment value, but sources revealed it will total $10 billion over multiple years, according to Bloomberg. In return, Microsoft’s Azure service will be OpenAI’s exclusive cloud-computing provider, powering all OpenAI workloads across research, products, and API services.
Microsoft has also used its partnership with OpenAI to revamp its own Bing search engine and improve its browser.
On February 7, Microsoft unveiled a new Bing search engine that runs on a next-generation OpenAI large language model, GPT-4, customized specifically for search. Bing Chat has been a success, helping Bing to exceed 100 million daily active users.
Also: ChatGPT vs. Bing Chat: Which AI chatbot should you use?
The latest partnership development was announced at Microsoft Build, where Microsoft said that Bing would become ChatGPT’s default search engine. This integration will grant ChatGPT access to the web and the ability to provide citations.
