Days after announcing mass lay-offs of 10,000 employees, Microsoft recently announced its intentions to further its partnership with OpenAI by investing 10 billion dollars, according to fresh reports. OpenAI is the parent company of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot that recently kindled extensive fears of cheating in schools and universities. The tech giant CEO Satya Nadella announced, “a multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment to accelerate AI breakthroughs” that is expected to be “broadly shared with the world,” in a company blog post. ChatGPT quickly gained prominence after its release in November by enabling users to utilise the AI chatbot for writing essays, poems, articles, and computer code within seconds.
As per the Economic Times, OpenAI released a statement that welcomed the investment as it would allow the company to continue its independent research and develop AI that’s increasingly safe, useful, and powerful. ChatGPT has alarmed teachers and professors with its capabilities, leading to its ban in schools and universities in the United States, while sparking fears of redundancies of office employees in the future. Media reports have revealed that the fresh investment of 10 billion dollars would increase OpenAI’s valuation to approximately 29 billion dollars.
Microsoft reportedly seeks to stay ahead of the curve in the advanced AI market as it competes with tech entities like Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet. OpenAI is also the creator of DALL-E, a program that can quickly compose digital images and illustrations upon request. It’s indicated that Microsoft intends to employ the driving tech behind ChatGPT and Dall-E in its software, like Bing, a web search engine.