New businesses to benefit as Microsoft expands access to revolutionary OpenAI chatbot technology; ChatGPT

Microsoft Corp announced on Monday that it is expanding access to the popular software developed by OpenAI, a startup that it is backing. The software, which has been previewed to Microsoft's cloud-computing customers under the Azure OpenAI Service, is now generally available. This move is expected to result in a significant increase in usage.

In 2019, Microsoft announced that it had invested $1 billion in OpenAI, and there have been reports that the company is considering investing an additional $10 billion. However, Microsoft has not commented on any potential deals.

Public interest in OpenAI soared after the November release of ChatGPT, a text-based chatbot that can draft prose, poetry, and even computer code on command. ChatGPT is powered by generative artificial intelligence, which creates new content after training on vast amounts of data. Microsoft is now allowing more customers to use this technology.

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In addition, Microsoft has announced that ChatGPT itself, not just its underlying technology, will soon be available via Microsoft's cloud. The company stated that it is vetting customer applications to prevent the potential abuse of the software and that its filters can screen for harmful content that users might input or the technology might produce.

The business potential of such software has attracted significant venture capital investment in startups producing it, at a time when funding has become scarce. Companies have already used the technology to create marketing content or to demonstrate how it could negotiate a cable bill. Microsoft has reported that CarMax, KPMG, and other companies are already using its Azure OpenAI service. The press release also quoted an Al Jazeera vice president as saying that the service could help the news organization summarize and translate content.

(With inputs from Reuters)