Microsoft announces general availability of Azure OpenAI Service

• Expands access to large, advanced AI models with added enterprise benefits

As part of a continued commitment to democratising AI, and the ongoing partnership with OpenAI, Microsoft has announced the general availability of Azure OpenAI Service.

With Azure OpenAI Service now generally available, more businesses can apply for access to the most advanced AI models in the world – including GPT-3.5, Codex, and DALL•E 2 – backed by the trusted enterprise-grade capabilities and AI-optimised infrastructure of Microsoft Azure, to create cutting-edge applications. Customers will also be able to access ChatGPT, a fine-tuned version of GPT-3.5 that has been trained and runs inference on Azure AI infrastructure, through Azure OpenAI Service soon.

Microsoft debuted Azure OpenAI Service in November 2021 to enable customers to tap into the power of large-scale generative AI models with the enterprise promises that customers have come to expect from Azure cloud and computing infrastructure – security, reliability, compliance, data privacy and built-in Responsible AI capabilities.

Since then, the company has seen the breadth of how Azure OpenAI Service has enabled customers – from generating content that helps better match shoppers with the right purchases to summarising customer service tickets, thereby freeing up time for employees to focus on more critical tasks.

Customers of all sizes across industries are using Azure OpenAI Service to improve experiences for end-users and streamline operational efficiencies internally. From startups to multinational corporations, organisations small and large are applying the capabilities of Azure OpenAI Service to advanced use cases such as customer support, customisation, and gaining insights from data using search, data extraction, and classification.

The general availability of Azure OpenAI Service is not only an important milestone for Microsoft customers but also for Azure.

Azure OpenAI Service provides businesses and developers with high-performance AI models at production scale with industry-leading uptime. This is the same production service that Microsoft uses to power its own products, including GitHub Copilot, an AI pair programmer that helps developers write better code, Power BI, which leverages GPT-3-powered natural language to automatically generate formulae and expressions, and the recently-announced Microsoft Designer, which helps creators build stunning content with natural language prompts.

All of this innovation shares a common thread: Azure’s purpose-built, AI-optimised infrastructure. Azure is also the core computing power behind OpenAI API’s family of models for research advancement and developer production.

Azure is currently the only global public cloud that offers AI supercomputers with massive scale-up and scale-out capabilities. With a unique architecture design that combines leading GPU and networking solutions, Azure delivers best-in-class performance and scale for the most compute-intensive AI training and inference workloads.

It’s the reason the world’s leading AI companies  including OpenAI, Meta, Hugging Face, and others continue to choose Azure to advance their AI innovation. Azure currently ranks in the top 15 of the TOP500 supercomputers worldwide and is the highest-ranked global cloud services provider today. Azure continues to be the cloud and compute power that propels large-scale AI advancements across the globe.

As an industry leader, Microsoft recognises that any innovation in AI must be done responsibly. This becomes even more important with powerful, new technologies like generative models. Microsoft has taken an iterative approach to large models, working closely with partner OpenAI and customers to carefully assess use cases, learn, and address potential risks.

Additionally, the company has implemented its own guardrails for Azure OpenAI Service that align with Responsible AI principles. As part of Microsoft’s Limited Access Framework, developers are required to apply for access, describing their intended use case or application before they are given access to the service.

Content filters uniquely designed to catch abusive, hateful and offensive content constantly monitor the input provided to the service as well as the generated content. In the event of a confirmed policy violation, Microsoft may ask the developer to take immediate action to prevent further abuse.