Microsoft to add ChatGPT across all platforms

Microsoft has this week confirmed a “multibillion-dollar investment” in the futuristic ChatGPT Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) chatbot by software company OpenAI, which has captivated Silicon Valley and grabbed the attention of internet users worldwide. This follows widespread anticipation that Microsoft would seek to increase investment in the online company, adding to its $1bn stake. This article will outline the competitive advantage this could give Microsoft, introduce the AI platform’s potential, and outline how this may begin a chain reaction that could revolutionise the future of ‘searching’ online.

This will follow these four points:

• OpenAI’s foundation and mission statement

• ChatGPT use cases in finance, law and everything in-between

• Integrating AI in Microsoft’s consumer and enterprise products

• Future of search and the threat to digital advertising models

OpenAI’s foundation and mission statement

OpenAI is a relatively new non-profit artificial general intelligence (AGI) company founded in 2015 by leading tech enthusiasts including Elon Musk, with the goal of promoting smart and friendly computer systems that offer consumers benefits. Its mission is to remain open and fully transparent and to ensure the benefits of the AGI are widely distributed. Two large success stories for OpenAI include its text-to-text AGI called ChatGPT, along with DALL-E 2, which is an AI system that can create realistic images and art from a user’s description in natural language.

ChatGPT use cases in finance, law and everything in-between

In real terms, ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) system that writes long or short answers to practically anything you ask it. The functionality extends from basic articles to computer scripts and code, to holiday planning an adventure abroad and drafting a car sales agreement. Using its massive text database gathered from information taken from the internet up to 2021, it can prepare text document templates for lawyers, write an Excel conditional formula for statisticians, and script code in languages such as Python, Java, c#, C++ and Swift that can be copied/pasted by a programmer.

However, don’t try and ask it for a weather forecast as it has no actionable knowledge after 2021, resulting in a somewhat frozen-in-time experience. Likewise, it will not provide financial investors or traders any updated technical or fundamental analysis of indices or shares, though it will gladly provide educational information to get a user started on their own. Nonetheless, the hypothetical use for a consumer-friendly AGI that would be able to support novice and professional traders alike with their predictive modelling, sentiment analysis, risk management and market data analysis does not seem as sci-fi as once imagined.  

The entire programme is based on Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF), which is why, as of writing, ChatGPT remains completely free to users. Their text-generated input helps the AGI learn what its users would like to use it for.

Integrating AI in Microsoft’s consumer and enterprise products

While the precise financial information on exactly how many billions of dollars Microsoft has invested in OpenAI remains currently unknown, the huge investment does come only a week after the company announced it would be laying off almost five per cent of its entire workforce, representing approximately 10,000 jobs. In this context, one may be able to conclude that Microsoft has prioritised this product category as a key investment in its future consumer and enterprise offering.

In a blog post online, Microsoft said that it will deploy ChatGPT across all of its consumer and enterprise products and go further by introducing new categories of digital experience built on OpenAI’s technology. One can take from this that one day, sooner than later, Microsoft Outlook will be able to use the AGI to completely write emails for you, Microsoft Word will be used to automatically draft templates and reports, while Microsoft Excel will be able to seamlessly write your formula’s and meet all your formatting needs simply with natural language user instructions. This is far from what competing software products offer.

Future of search and the threat to digital advertising models

In December, the New York Times reported that Google had declared an internal ‘Code Red’, as the AGI threatens its core digital advertising business model. Users of AGI platforms do not have to leave the website, scroll through search results, or accept targeted advertising on each individual website Google guides them to. Therefore, this is a significant drain on advertising revenue – perhaps one key reason Google has not, as of yet, offered a competing product. A Microsoft Bing Search bar with ChatGPT integration may be the future king of internet search.

Regardless of which company attracts the most consumers, what is increasingly evident in the example illustrated by the power of ChatGPT is that internet searching and browsing will, with each updated model, be forever changed by the AI online revolution.

Key Takeaways

The rise of AGI systems such as ChatGPT bring with them infinite opportunities for creation, organisation, time optimisation and accurate knowledge of vast subject areas. Without a doubt, these systems will eventually change the way users interact with data online and contribute to the internet. However, at their current stages of development, these computer models are far away from authoring an International Best Seller or creating a single algorithm that would somehow predict future fluctuations in the stock market ahead of time. That is too far-fetched.

Although, what will come to your Microsoft Windows-powered desktop computer soon is the help of an AGI that can help you save time, grammar and spelling mistakes and structure your documents better.

 -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disclaimer: Any information presented is for general education and informational purposes hence, not intended to be and does not constitute investment or trading advice or recommendation. No opinion given in the material constitutes a recommendation by M4Markets that any particular investment, security, transaction or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person.

It does not take into account your personal circumstances or objectives. Any information relating to past performance of an investment does not necessarily guarantee future performance.

Trinota Markets (Global) Limited does not give warranty as to the accuracy and completeness of this information.