Microsoft GPT-4 preview for customers using OpenAI Azure Service

Microsoft has announced that OpenAI’s newly released model GPT-4 is available in preview in Azure OpenAI Service. GPT-4 now joins the list of tools and models like ChatGPT, GPT-3.5, and DALL.E which are already available on Azure OpenAI Service.

Customers can apply to get access from now and Microsoft will start billing customers for all GPT-4 usage from April 1. As per Microsoft’s blog, customers will be charged $0.03 per 1,000 tokens and above, depending on the task. This allows businesses to use underlying GPT-4 to build their own applications.

Microsoft said in its blog that with GPT-4 in Azure OpenAI Service, businesses will be able to streamline communications and reduce harmful outputs. “We are just scratching the surface with generative AI technologies and are working to enable our customers to responsibly adopt Azure OpenAI Service to bring real impact,” a company blog said. Companies like Epic Healthcare, Coursera, and Coca Cola have already started leveraging this model for various use cases.

Beginning of this month, Microsoft announced the availability of ChatGPT in preview on OpenAI Azure Service. Priced at $0.002/1,000 tokens, businesses can leverage the chatbot for faster and more efficient customer support resolution, creating content, handle complex queries, among others.

OpenAI released GPT-4 last week. Describing its most advanced AI model to date, GPT-4 has already been incorporated into many of its products. The company recently announced that its Office apps will be leveraging GPT-4 and other similar large language models through Microsoft 365 Copilot. Further, Microsoft’s Bing AI search engine is based on the proprietary model caller Prometheus, which in turn is based on OpenAI’s GPT-4 model.

To be sure, Microsoft and OpenAI signed a billion-dollar deal in 2019, by virtue of which the former became the exclusive provider of cloud computing services to OpenAI. In 2021, Microsoft launched the Azure OpenAI Service, an offering that gives enterprises an access to OpenAI’s AI systems with business-focused features. In January this year, Microsoft extended the partnership with OpenAI through a multi-billion, multi-year deal.