Microsoft Launches Its New Internal AI Model MAI-1
Microsoft announced on Thursday, August 28, the start of testing a new AI model that has been developed entirely in-house, a move that will enhance its voice assistant "Copilot" and reduce its reliance on models from "OpenAI" in its core products.
The new model is named MAI-1-preview, and it is currently being tested on the "LMArena" platform dedicated to user evaluations. The company commented on this step in a post on its official blog, stating: "We will roll out the MAI-1-preview model for some text use cases within Copilot over the coming weeks to learn and improve from user feedback." Microsoft has also allowed developers to request early access through a dedicated form.
Despite its efforts to develop its own models, Microsoft remains a strategic partner and major supporter of "OpenAI", which is valued at around $500 billion, having invested more than $13 billion in it. "OpenAI" in turn relies on Microsoft's cloud infrastructure to run its models.
Recent developments indicate a shift in the nature of the relationship between the two tech giants from collaboration to competition, as Microsoft added "OpenAI" to its list of competitors in its annual shareholder report last year, a list that previously included companies like "Amazon", "Apple", "Google", and "Meta".
For its part, "OpenAI" is expanding its collaboration with other cloud service providers like "CoreWeave", "Google", and "Oracle" to meet the rising demand for its services, as its assistant "ChatGPT" reaches nearly 700 million users weekly.
Microsoft's new model ranked 13th on the "LMArena" platform for text workload evaluations on Thursday, trailing behind models from major competitors such as "Anthropic", "DeepMind", "Google", "Mistral", "OpenAI", and "X.AI".
The company revealed that the model has been optimized using around 15,000 graphics processing units (H100) from "NVIDIA", and it also operates on a set of new chips GB200 produced by "NVIDIA" as well.
On this occasion, the CEO of Microsoft's AI unit, Mustafa Suleyman, wrote on the "X" platform: "We have big ambitions for our future - developing models, an exciting roadmap for computing, and the opportunity to reach billions of people through Microsoft products." He emphasized that "MAI-1-preview represents our first fully in-house trained core model."
