Duh.
Who didn't know that?
If MS were happy to be slavish distributors of OpenAI models they wouldn't be supporting 40+ different AI models on Azure or hiring top AI researchers all over, establishing an internal AI operation, or cooking up their own SLM models, like ORCA.
While Musk and others try to "pause" AI development so they can try to slow OpenAI until catch up to GPT, Microsoft simply bought their way to OpenAI's level and codes to serve as a platform for their own internal efforts to develop not a single do-everything model but to create a whole range of specialized software tools focused on actual business needs. (Not unlike how, tired of SONY bribing third-party developers to keep their games off XBOX, MS opened the checkbook and bought ZENIMAX and ABK to build a 100-strong stable of studios SONY can't bribe. We just saw what judicious use of deep pockets can achieve, ethically, in the gaming business. Game development for fun and profit.)
Consider it EMBRACE AND EXTEND 2.0.
They've done this before (Spyglass, for one) and they'll do it again and again as needed.
Now seriously, as Marvel's Quiksilver use to say, "You didn't see that coming?"
If anything, letting OpenAI make deals with others (and how well is Apple doing with their deal? Aside from the obnoxious ads?) and get others to run their customer accounts at their expense, one can assume MS is ready to phase in their own tech and gracefully uncouple from OpenAI with a view they've extracted all the profit and tech they need from them.
There's more to Microsoft and AI than GPT. And Ahab-ing OpenAI only blinds you to what anybody else who remembers MS history and reads PR releases notices.
Look around, they're not hiding anything.
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