GPT-4’s smash success could hamper AI usage for Microsoft’s B2B customers

Microsoft is getting ready to announce the integration of ChatGPT, the already-famous AI-powered chatbot, into its Office productivity suite of apps, the media are reporting.

According to a report on The Information, the company should unveil the upgrade on Thursday, but it faces a major challenge – the lack of proper hardware needed to run the tool at scale.

Citing some company employees, the publication said Microsoft is “facing an internal shortage of the server hardware needed to run the AI.”

GPT-4

To be able to meet demand, especially since it opened up the floodgates to the new, ChatGPT-powered Bing search engine, the company decided to ration access to the hardware for some Microsoft teams building other artificial intelligence tools.

Being short on GPU power could also mean that small and medium-sized businesses who want to jump on the AI bandwagon with Microsoft might be hamstringed, as Microsoft is likely to prioritize enterprise users and the public sector.

It’s quite a conundrum that won’t be easily solved, especially given that Microsoft should now be on the hunt for the likes of H100 and the A100, which are not your standard GPUs.

As per the media reports, Office should be powered by GPT-4, the latest iteration of OpenAI’s chatbot, and one that’s a significant upgrade compared to previous versions. Bing, it seems, has been running on GPT-4 for a while now, without anyone being aware of the change.

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Microsoft is holding an event on March 16, in which it should lay out its plan to add the chatbot to its Office productivity suite. The company should explain how adding GPT-4 to Teams, Word, or Outlook, can help people be more productive and spend less time on repetitive and menial tasks.

ChatGPT was first introduced late last year and gained world fame almost overnight. It is currently one of the best AI-powered chatbots, capable of writing entire stories, engaging in prolonged discussions, and even writing malicious code and emails.

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