2 min Applications

‘Microsoft working on privacy-friendly variant of ChatGPT’

‘Microsoft working on privacy-friendly variant of ChatGPT’

Microsoft is working on a privacy-focused chatbot for businesses. The product is said to cost ten times as much as a regular ChatGPT subscription.

According to The Information, Microsoft will market the chatbot to industries such as banking and healthcare. These parties tend to have to comply with strict privacy guidelines internally as well as state regulations.

Data protection

The new service is expected to be announced within this financial quarter. Microsoft plans to run ChatGPT on dedicated servers, which are separate from the hardware behind the widely available variant of OpenAI. This should curb the risk of a data breach.

Not entirely surprisingly, this solution will cost extra: The Information’s report cites subscription costs as much as ten times higher than access to public ChatGPT costs businesses.

A salient detail is that OpenAI itself is said to be working on such a privacy-friendly product. It serves as a reminder that Microsoft and OpenAI remain two different parties, even though the Redmond tech giant is a billion-dollar investor in the AI company. This investment comes with access to OpenAI technology for Microsoft products. It has since been integrated into various Microsoft services. Examples include the new Bing AI chat feature and extended Office 365 tools.

It is therefore likely that the two parties will be competing for the same customers. How this will affect the cooperation between OpenAI and Microsoft remains to be seen. In any case, the two have previously stated that the partnership is supposed to last several years.

Many organizations are hesitant about using external AI chatbots. For example, Samsung has re-banned the use of ChatGPT and the EU is attempting to set up an overarching set of AI regulations.