Microsoft announces its first own AI models
Microsoft has published its own AI models with which the company could make itself less dependent on OpenAI.
Microsoft Copilot will probably be based on its own AI models in the long term.
(Image: Primakov/Shutterstock.com)
Microsoft's AI department presented its first self-developed AI models on Thursday: MAI-Voice-1 AI and MAI-1-Preview. According to the Redmond-based company, the new MAI-Voice-1 voice model should be able to generate one minute of audio in less than a second using just one GPU. The MAI-1-Preview model, meanwhile, is intended to provide "an insight into future offerings within Copilot".
"Big ambitions for the future"
The software company describes MAI-Voice-1 as its first "expressive and natural speech generation model". It is already being used in the "Copilot Daily" function and podcasts. Microsoft sees voice as "the interface of the future for AI companions"; the MAI-Voice-1 AI model delivers "high-resolution, expressive audio quality" in both single and multi-speaker scenarios, so the company.
Interested parties can try out the voice model at Copilot-Labs. Here, users can enter what they want the AI to say. They can also change both the voice and the language style.
Meanwhile, the second AI model MAI-1-Preview is available for public testing on the LMArena platform. LM Arena is a public, web-based platform that evaluates large language models (LLMs) through anonymous, crowd-sourced pairwise comparisons. According to Microsoft, MAI-1-Preview is the first "end-to-end trained base model of MAI", which it says has been trained on around 15,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs. Microsoft says the model was developed for users who need an AI model that can follow instructions and "provide helpful answers to everyday questions".
Microsoft AI plans to roll out MAI-1-Preview for specific text use cases in its Copilot AI assistant. This is currently based on OpenAI's large language models.
"We have big ambitions for where we go next", writes Microsoft AI in its blog post. "Not only will we pursue further advances here, but we believe that orchestrating a range of specialized models serving different user intents and use cases will unlock immense value."
Microsoft and OpenAI: It's complicated
The multi-billion dollar partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI is complicated, to put it simply. OpenAI wants to change its corporate structure from a non-profit to a for-profit company and become more independent. This restructuring and the associated changes to Microsoft's shareholding in OpenAI are said to be a source of contention. Microsoft has invested a total of around 13 billion US dollars in OpenAI. The question is how many company shares they would receive in return in the event of a conversion.
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OpenAI is also approaching Softbank, which is working together on"Project Stargate". OpenAI is also considering giving up server capacity from Microsoft. Furthermore, Microsoft should not be able to access OpenAI's intellectual property at will. With the first AI models of its own, Microsoft is apparently gradually looking to become less dependent on OpenAI. The contract between the two companies officially expires in 2030.
(afl)
