New Microsoft AI model may challenge GPT-4 and Google Gemini

Microsoft is engaged on a brand new large-scale AI language mannequin referred to as MAI-1, which may probably rival state-of-the-art fashions from Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI, in line with a report by The Information. This marks the primary time Microsoft has developed an in-house AI mannequin of this magnitude since investing over $10 billion in OpenAI for the rights to reuse the startup’s AI fashions. OpenAI’s GPT-4 powers not solely ChatGPT but in addition Microsoft Copilot.

The event of MAI-1 is being led by Mustafa Suleyman, the previous Google AI chief who not too long ago served as CEO of the AI startup Inflection earlier than Microsoft acquired the majority of the startup’s staff and mental property for $650 million in March. Though MAI-1 could construct on strategies introduced over by former Inflection employees, it’s reportedly a completely new giant language mannequin (LLM), as confirmed by two Microsoft staff aware of the undertaking.

With roughly 500 billion parameters, MAI-1 will likely be considerably bigger than Microsoft’s earlier open supply fashions (reminiscent of Phi-3, which we covered final month), requiring extra computing energy and coaching knowledge. This reportedly locations MAI-1 in an identical league as OpenAI’s GPT-4, which is rumored to have over 1 trillion parameters (in a mixture-of-experts configuration) and effectively above smaller fashions like Meta and Mistral’s 70 billion parameter fashions.

The event of MAI-1 suggests a twin strategy to AI inside Microsoft, specializing in each small domestically run language fashions for cell units and bigger state-of-the-art fashions which can be powered by the cloud. Apple is reportedly exploring an identical strategy. It additionally highlights the corporate’s willingness to discover AI improvement independently from OpenAI, whose know-how presently powers Microsoft’s most bold generative AI options, together with a chatbot baked into Windows.

Reportedly, the precise function of MAI-1 has not been decided (even inside Microsoft), and its most splendid use will rely on its efficiency, in line with certainly one of The Data’s sources. To coach the mannequin, Microsoft has been allocating a big cluster of servers with Nvidia GPUs and compiling coaching knowledge from varied sources, together with textual content generated by OpenAI’s GPT-4 and public Web knowledge.

Relying on the progress made within the coming weeks, The Data studies that Microsoft could preview MAI-1 as early as its Construct developer convention later this month, as reported by one of many sources cited by the publication.