Key Points are:
- Outage impacts Microsoft cloud platform Azure for hours
- Multiple Microsoft services including Teams and Outlook hit
- Microsoft says most customers now have service restored
- Shares down 2.4% in pre-market
As per Jan 24 – Reuters – Microsoft Corporation the largest vendor of computer software in the market on Tuesday aimed to assure business investors that its big bet on artificial intelligence AI is paying off. Microsoft customers are even scrutinizing their cloud spending in this economic turbulence.
Early evidence is getting help from the GitHub Copilor tool that has the capability to write computer code for programmers easily and quickly.
The tool, which opened to the public last June, has attracted 400,000 customers within a month. On Tuesday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that more than one million people have used Copilot so far.
Shares of Microsoft fell slightly in after-hours trading on Tuesday after forecasting that cloud computing revenue for the current quarter would fall slightly short of Wall Street estimates.
Still, the rise of CoPilot is an early sign that people will pay for so-called generative AI, a technology that can generate prose, images, or in this case, computer code on command after learning skills from big data.
The CEO of Microsoft-owned GitHub said last year that Copilot gives programmers suggestions on what to write next, writing up to 35% or 40% of a file’s code when enabled. According to GitHub’s blog, it costs $100 per year for individual customers, or it can be paid for with a business account.
Microsoft announced this week that it will launch a multibillion-dollar investment, including supercomputer development and cloud support, that will support a startup known as OpenAI for the first time in 2019, which aims to develop generative artificial intelligence at the forefront.
Copilot itself is based on OpenAI technology, as is the chat bot sensation Open AI that launched last year under the name ChatGPT. Microsoft announced that it will create ChatGPT, which could make text or poetry available along with code through its cloud.
ChatGPT has attracted enough attention from industry watchers to say that it could answer any user query if it were updated, and it could compete with Microsoft’s Bing search engine, which industry leader Alphabet Inc ( GOOGL. O ) offers, potentially allowing use it on Google. Reuters previously reported that Google is working on implementing its flagship artificial intelligence.
Nadella said Azure’s OpenAI service, which powers the startup’s technology through Microsoft’s cloud, has already attracted 200 customers, including KPMG and Al Jazeera.
For more business and tech posts visit techfinaly.com
