Bing, Microsoft 365 and $10 billion in OpenAI

While seeking to integrate ChatGPT with Bing and its Microsoft 365 bureaucratic suite, Microsoft has reportedly decided to invest some $10 billion in OpenAI. An association as promising as it is risky which scares Google…

ChatGPT is on everyone’s lips right now. This next-generation artificial intelligence fascinates as much as it worries the digital world: Internet users, who can ask questions and receive unique, detailed and naturally formulated answers, teachers who see it as a great cheat tool for students , developers who have already taken it over to create various tools, hackers and scammers who are taking advantage of the general enthusiasm to distribute malware, but also digital players. Many see it as a potential competitor to Google – an idea that is not shared by AI – so much so that the Mountain View firm, yet a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence, is really worried. . To the point of launching a “red code” and reorganizing various departments to move forward on its AI projects.

But Google is not the only digital giant to take a close interest in this gifted AI. And Microsoft, which had not shone in the field of artificial intelligence until now, intends to take advantage of the arrival of this revolutionary tool to boost its products and services. Thus, a few days ago, we learned that the publisher was preparing to integrate ChatGPT into its Bing search engine – still lagging behind – in order to offer more relevant results and tackle Google head-on, but also that he intended to integrate it into his Microsoft 365 suite. But he obviously does not intend to stop there.

Microsoft 365 and ChatGPT: AI to the rescue of Word, Outlook and PowerPoint

Microsoft had already invested a billion dollars in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, in 2019, feeling its full potential. And with the unveiling of ChatGPT to the general public, the company seems to have bet on the right horse. His investment allows him to benefit from an exclusive license on GPT-3, the language model behind the revolutionary AI. Visibly seduced by the first results, it would prepare a new investment of 10 billion dollars, as reported by the newsletter Semafor. This would allow her to receive 75% of the profits generated by OpenAI as long as she has not recovered her initial stake. Once this is done, it will get 49% of the revenue, while 49% will go to various investors, and the remaining 2% to non-profit actors linked to OpenAI. Everyone is a winner, since this allows the start-up to benefit from the funds necessary for its development, especially since the calculation costs are exorbitant. For its part, the Redmond firm will be able to use their technologies for its own tools.

According to the media The Information, Microsoft would like to integrate AI into Microsoft 365, its office suite that replaces Microsoft Office. Thus, he would use it to improve Outlook search results so that users can find what they are looking for without having to use keywords. The firm also reportedly looked at how these AI models could suggest responses to emails and recommend document edits to improve users’ writing in Word. Of course, ChatGPT would adapt to the specificities of each software in order to complement them as well as possible. It is not known, however, if Microsoft plans to launch these functions or if it is simply an ongoing experiment.

It is easy to imagine the possibilities that such an integration could open up, such as summarizing information from Teams meeting transcripts or automatic redaction for certain paragraphs, or even entire texts, within different software. “AI will reinvent the way you do everything on Windows”said last week to The Verge Panos Panay, Microsoft’s chief for Windows and Surface. Still, the firm will have to face many challenges and difficulties to achieve this, such as the reliability and accuracy of the answers/proposals, while protecting the confidentiality of user data.

ChatGPT and Bing: a combination as promising as it is risky

In addition to Microsoft Office, ChatGPT could also be a game changer in the field of search engines. No need to enter keywords and sort through the countless results to obtain information! ChatGPT offers a simple and complete direct response in natural language – you can even impose a response style on it. Again according to The Information, the Redmond company is preparing to integrate ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. The objective: to attack Google head-on.

Thanks to its investment in 2019 in OpenAI, Microsoft is preparing to integrate the DALL-E image generator into the new application of its Office suite, Microsoft Designer. The Redmond firm would thus plan, from March, to directly display AI responses as the first response from its search engine, in the form of complete sentences citing the source of the response. Please note that AI would not replace Bing’s search engine technology, on the contrary it would complement and enrich it.

The objective of such a merger for Microsoft is to finally position itself as the real competitor of Google, which alone holds 90% of the sector’s market share. Facing him, the Redmond firm seems very tiny, even if it is the world number two in research with tens of millions of users. She couldn’t let this unique opportunity pass her by. It will however have to ensure the quality of the answers delivered because, if it is not very serious that a tool in beta version offers erroneous answers – the user is warned and on his guard, he is precisely there to testing and testing the technology – that’s much more problematic for a search engine aimed at the general public.

ChatGPT: Google strikes back cautiously

There is still work to make ChatGPT really operational and credible. For the moment, the knowledge of artificial intelligence is limited to 2021, so it is unable to know the news. It also gives false or incomplete answers, which poses a real problem in terms of the spread of fake news. In addition, she still has a rather poor style and vocabulary, and her answers can be biased, even discriminatory. The OpenAI president also explained in a tweet that relying on ChatGPT for anything serious was for the moment “a mistake“. Still, it is a very promising technology, but it still needs to be developed and improved before it can actually be used.

For its part, even if it is cautious about this type of technology so as not to tarnish its reputation, Google has big plans for its AIs for 2023. It is working in particular on AlphaCode, which is capable of coding as well as a beginner programmer, and LaMDa, a conversational AI so promising that some researchers are convinced that it has a soul – the Mountain View firm takes a lot of precautions for its development, so we are not likely to use it anytime soon.