Microsoft is not playing games when it comes to advancing its artificial intelligence initiatives this year as sources familiar with the matter told The Verge today that the firm could be ready to reveal further details about its AI-powered version of MS Office in the coming weeks.
The wheels are in motion and the battle for dominance in the up-and-coming market of AI-powered software has started as ChatGPT – the smart chatbot created by OpenAI – managed to attract over 100 million users in roughly two months as per data from Swiss bank UBS.
The Redmond-based tech firm headed by Satya Nadella noticed the platform’s stellar growth and accelerated its plans to launch multiple AI-powered products including a new version of its flagship search engine Bing.
Microsoft is Flooding the Market with the New Smart Versions of its Software
The new Bing is powered by Microsoft’s proprietary Prometheus AI model, which leverages the power of OpenAI’s language models ChatGPT and GPT-3.5 to learn and come up with more accurate and faster responses to users’ queries.
The same technology will now be used to further enhance the tools and capabilities of Microsoft’s top productivity tool – MS Office – and could reveal the new AI-powered versions of Word, PowerPoint, and Excel as soon as March if everything goes as planned.
Microsoft has already been testing some AI tools for is Outlook e-mail solution to help users write and locate their correspondence and it also launched a product Viva Sales that captures sales data from any Office 365 application and Teams with the help of ChatGPT and the Azure OpenAI service.
Nadella commented during the event in which the new Bing was revealed that AI could shape “pretty much every software category” and emphasized that Microsoft (MSFT) is focusing on developing a co-pilot model for all of its products and solutions that consists of being assisted by an AI solution in every step of the way.
Some research reports are already valuing the market for AI-powered solutions at more than $1 trillion within the next 5 to 10 years as more and more companies are developing products and services that rely on this technology to improve the customer’s experience.
Is Google’s Long-Standing Leadership in the Search Market Under Threat?
Microsoft’s rival, Alphabet (GOOG), was apparently rushed to launch an AI-powered version of its leading search engine called Bard in response to the growing threat that ChatGPT and Bing represent to its core business.
Some tech experts have warned that Google’s business model could be severely affected once these solutions come out and are available to the general public, primarily as the way they will be monetized will probably change.
At the moment, advertising revenues account for more than 80% of Alphabet’s revenues. Since generative AI provides answers to questions and text prompts rather than presenting links where the information can be found, it is unclear if the same model that has made the company founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin a trillion-dollar business will still be feasible after this new trend takes over.
The value of Google stock has dropped for three days straight starting with a sharp 7% decline on 8 February when the company’s AI-powered solution Bard gave inaccurate answers to a question related to the first discoveries made by the James Webb telescope.
A spokesperson from the Mountain View-based tech giant emphasized that this mistake reinforced the need to thoroughly test these solutions before they are made available to the general public.
However, Microsoft appears to be ready to launch many products that will integrate generative AI and market participants are starting to wonder if the company is suddenly becoming a serious contester to what has been an undisputed dominance thus far.
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