ChatGPT may be a game changer for Microsoft as its the company’s CEO Satya Nadella announces plans to implement the technology across all of Microsoft’s products.
Microsoft plans to open up the dynamic AI technology, such as ChatGPT accessible to billions of people by infusing it into all its products, its CEO Satya Nadella said this week. ChatGPT’s capacity to generate text using brief prompts will likely be in the pipeline for inclusion into the Office 365 product suite, including Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
With the help of OpenAI’s models Word’s autocomplete feature, and autocorrect can perform more complex tasks than grammar and style correction. They could also generate larger chunks of text based on a handful of words. While Microsoft hasn’t revealed specific features yet, users may be able to input commands and then create full PowerPoint emails and presentations.
These features help Microsoft draw in younger users. Although Microsoft Office 365 has been the standard of choice for many enterprises, experts say that the tech giant needs to attract those drawn to collaboration-oriented products such as Google Docs and Sheets.
“Microsoft has seen a decline in its popularity against Google, particularly in the education sector and younger demographics across the colleges. Additionally, a generation of students use Google Docs for their primary. Microsoft must change that,” Dan Ives, an analyst for technology for Wedbush Securities, told Forbes. “I believe ChatGPT could be the solution that could transform the relationship of Google Docs and Microsoft Word.”
In addition to the introduction of ChatGPT to its products for consumers, Microsoft announced this week that it is using OpenAI’s technology within its cloud computing system Azure OpenAI Service which will enable customers who pay to access the latest AI models, including GPT-3.5, which is the giant model of language that underlies ChatGPT as well as Dall E 2, the image generator.
In the year 2019, the tech giant from Seattle put $1 billion into OpenAI. It was named its AI laboratory’s research and development-only cloud provider and obtained the exclusivity license to commercialize and use GPT-3 technology from OpenAI. Microsoft is currently believed to be looking to make a $10 billion investment into the hottest AI startup.
“I believe ChatGPT is the solution that can transform the way we think about Google Docs and Microsoft Word.”
Dan Ives, tech analyst at Wedbush Securities
Google Workspace, which encompasses collaborative tools such as Google Drive, Docs, Meet, Slides and more, was used by 3 billion people in 2021, including non-paid users and companies. For 2021 Google Workspace had seven million paying customers, which is less than the Office 365 paying customer base. Office 365, which comprises collaborative versions that include Word, Excel, Outlook, and other productivity applications, was home to 54.1 million consumers and more than 300 million paid commercial customers in 2021. These users are charged between $6 to $22 per month per user turn on to the plan they choose. Google provides its Workspace tools to compete with pricing that can range from $6 to $18 per monthly user (in 2022, Google removed Workspace’s free version for companies).
“Microsoft’s weakness lies with the consumer side, and that’s the place where Google excels,” Ives says. “Implementing ChatGPT and artificial intelligence can fuel the engine of growth for consumers.”
Microsoft has already integrated a few AI features in its software: Microsoft Editor utilizes AI to improve writing tone and provide concise alternatives to sentences and produces summaries of lengthy texts. These are features that can be enhanced with ChatGPT’s tech. In 2020, Microsoft declared that Azure AI customers could use AI to caption images.
“For long periods of time, Microsoft created templates that can be used within Office especially Word as well as PowerPoint. Imagine what they can do today… They’ll add five keywords. Then we’ll write a note to the person you want to thank,” says David Steinberg, co-founder, and CEO of the AI-based marketing company Zeta Global. Steinberg said: “It’s going to be extremely effective.”
In addition to competing in collaboration and workspace tools, Google and Microsoft are rivals on other fronts, like search. Microsoft has announced that it is planning to utilize ChatGPT, a natural-sounding and human-like chatbot from OpenAI ChatGPT, to enhance Microsoft’s web searching engine, Bing.
Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing infrastructure and access to vast quantities of data can assist in boosting the performance of OpenAI’s algorithms. Its Microsoft Graph is among the most extensive datasets of work-related human activity. According to a Microsoft study, it includes data from all of Microsoft’s apps that contain 400 billion emails and 500 million LinkedIn members, more than 180 million Office 365 users, and 800 million Windows 10 devices. The company trains its AI models with more than 420 billion interactions that occur in Microsoft Office every month, the report revealed.
“This is an excellent chance for Microsoft in Azure.” Azure part of the business.”
Brad Zelnick, managing director of research on software equity at Deutsche Bank
The company uses all the data to find patterns and interpret them to perform tasks performed by other applications. For example, data from Bing is used to give data on stock levels within Microsoft Excel, and LinkedIn data is used to create the resume builder tool in Word. Deutsche Bank analyst Brad Zelnick claims that the company can connect this data collection network with OpenAI’s algorithms to automate the tasks of daily professionals with knowledge.
“The most significant opportunity isn’t solely in implementing this technology but also who’s the best at implementing it and who will be capable of training the algorithms of this technology using the most extensive data set,” the analyst says. When you look at the benefits of Azure deployment, you’ll see that learning these algorithms will require vast amounts of computing analysis, data analytics, and data infrastructure. This is a massive chance for Microsoft to take advantage of Azure.” Azure part of the equation.”
Following the acquisition by Google of the artificial intelligence company DeepMind, Google has also made similar strides in AI research. For instance, Google’s LaMDA marked a significant breakthrough in large-scale language models, the technology behind ChatGPT, and lets users ask questions to a chatbot that can answer in a human-like way. The former Apple Chief Executive Officer and Artificial Intelligence-based company for enterprise software Zeta co-founder John Sculley say Google had an opportunity to be the winner in AI. However, it has instead invested in its core offerings, which include Google Search and YouTube.
“Google is involved in the business of advertising. And it has built its AI capabilities around processing huge quantities of data related to the search. It hasn’t yet entered the area of productivity automation on the scale that Microsoft plans to do,” Sculley says.
May Habibi, the CEO of Writer AI, an AI software for writing content for companies and teams, suggests that another reason that big tech companies such as Google might have stayed away from rolling out the generative AI on their platforms like Docs or Slides could be because of the risk of security, data governance, and legal concerns.
While ChatGPT can provide authoritative and understandable answers, The chatbot has been widely criticized for being inaccurate. Tech media firm CNET has secretly employed ChatGPT for its writing and was later forced to rectify the errors because they contained several errors in fundamental concepts. If ChatGPT creates the same mistakes within Word or PowerPoint, this could turn off consumers from using the software, Habibi says.
One of the reasons Google Docs and Gmail have restricted themselves to autocomplete is that it simply isn’t because Google’s AI model isn’t capable of generating longer-length content. LaMDa isn’t able to long-length content generation,” Habibi told Forbes. “It’s mostly because Google has been hesitant about divulging their technology, knowing the risks associated with large-scale model languages when it comes to the question of plausible falsehoods.”
Priya Vijayarajendran, who served as the vice president for data as well as AI at Microsoft between 2019 and 2022, and was closely associated in close collaboration with OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and his team, states that OpenAI was initially set up to make the most advanced AI models available. Open source so that everybody could benefit from the technology. However, while it was initially set up as a non-profit organization, OpenAI has since shifted into a business model that is for profit when it joined forces in partnership with Microsoft to market its AI.
“I’ve learned from my colleagues and acquaintances from Microsoft that they’re trying to develop the product to provide greater benefits for everyone else. Therefore, the evidence of who can get the product onto the marketplace,” Vijayarajendran says. “I believe that Sam and his team had a noble idea. And I’m sure that the integrity of their vision is maintained despite Microsoft being a major player.”
