New Delhi: It looks like the tech giant Microsoft is finally ready to stand on its own feet when it comes to artificial intelligence. For years now the company
has depended heavily on OpenAI to power its popular AI tools like Copilot and the image generator DALLE 3. But things are changing fast in the technology world, and the Windows maker wants more control.
According to a recent report by the Financial Times, Microsoft is planning to build its own powerful artificial intelligence models. This move will significantly reduce its reliance on the ChatGPT maker. It seems the company wants to control its own destiny rather than renting technology from a partner forever.
Pushing for true self-sufficiency
Mustafa Suleyman is the AI chief at Microsoft and he has some big plans for the future. He joined the company back in 2024 and he recently spoke to the FT about how the company needs to stop leaning on others. He told the publication that they are pursuing a new mission to build technology in house.
This strategic shift comes after the companyrestructured its relationship with OpenAI last October. Suleyman believes they have the resources to do it alone. He stated, “We have to develop our own foundation models, which are at the absolute frontier, with gigawatt-scale compute and some of the very best AI training teams in the world.” This essentially means Microsoft is ready to compete directly with the startup it funded.
Impact on jobs and the future
The company is not just building software for fun as they think it will change how we work very soon. It is a bit worrying for people with desk jobs because the timeline is very short. Suleyman made a bold prediction about the near future of work and how artificial intelligence will handle many tasks that humans currently do.
He said that “white-collar work” like being a lawyer or accountant or project manager could change drastically. Suleyman warned that “most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.” The company plans to launch these new in-house models “sometime this year” to make that happen.
The business side of things
Microsoft has poured billions into this technology and they are not stopping anytime soon. They forecast a spend of $140 billion in capital expenditure for the fiscal year ending in June. However, Wall Street is getting nervous about all this spending without seeing enough profit yet.
Shares of the company are down more than 13 per cent over the past month. Investors fear an AI bubble is forming and that the returns will not match the investment. Despite this, Microsoft is moving ahead to build infrastructure. They want to create tools that can “learn and improve over time” and take autonomous actions.
