ChatGPT, OpenAI’s viral AI-powered chatbot technology, is now available in a more enterprise-friendly package.
Microsoft today announcement that ChatGPT is generally available through the Azure OpenAI Serviceof the company A fully managed, enterprise-focused offering designed to give enterprises access to OpenAI technologies with additional governance and compliance features. Customers, who must already be “Microsoft Managed Customers and Partners”, can apply here for special access.
ChatGPT joins the range of other systems developed by OpenAI already served through the Azure OpenAI service, including the text generator GPT-3.5the code generator Manuscript and image generation DALL-E 2. Microsoft has a close working relationship with OpenAI, having invested Billions in the startup and signed a exclusive agreement to commercialize OpenAI’s AI research.
It pays dividends, apparently. Microsoft said today that more than 1,000 brands are registered with the Azure OpenAI service.
The Azure OpenAI Service version of ChatGPT is priced at $0.002 for 1,000 tokens, or approximately 750 words, with billing for ChatGPT usage starting March 13. (ChatGPT consumes plain text represented as a series of tokens; the word “fantastic” would be split into “fan”, “heap”, and “tick” tokens, for example.) This is the same price as the developer focused on ChatGPT APIlaunched on March 1.
Eric Boyd, CVP of AI Platform at Microsoft, noted in a blog post that Azure OpenAI Service customers can configure ChatGPT responses to “align with their organization”. This is an important call given that users were able to ask ChatGPT to answer questions in racist and sexist manners, invent facts without disclosing that it does so and circumventing certain high-level protection measures.
“Developers can integrate [ChatGPT-powered] experiences directly in their own apps, including improving existing bots to handle unexpected questions, summarizing call center conversations to enable faster customer support resolutions, creating new ad copy with personalized offers, claims handling automation and more,” Boyd wrote.
Despite the more problematic aspects of ChatGPT, adoption has been rapid. OpenAI has yet to provide API usage numbers, but in December the consumer-facing app ChatGPT had one. estimated over 100 million monthly active users. Brands such as Snap and Quizlet have integrated it – or plan to integrate it soon – into their respective platforms. For example, Instacart says it will be ChatGPT to create Ask Instacart, a tool that will allow Instacart customers to get “shoppable” responses informed by product data from the company’s retail partners. And The Office Depot is building a ChatGPT-powered chatbot to support many of its internal business units, particularly in HR.
People at the company in particular seem to have embraced it, which bodes well for the launch of the Azure OpenAI service. According to a report of Fishbowl, which surveyed professionals from companies such as Bank of America, Amazon, and McKinsey, nearly 30% said they used ChatGPT to perform work-related tasks such as marketing and advertising, programming, consulting , accounting and education.
However, some employers have been reluctant. Wells Fargo is among several companies that have would have imposed usage limits on ChatGPT for productivity and compliance reasons.
