Jan 16 (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) on Monday said it is widening access to hugely popular software from OpenAI, a startup it is backing whose futuristic ChatGPT chatbot has captivated Silicon Valley.
Microsoft said the startup’s tech, which it so far has previewed to its cloud-computing customers in a program it called the Azure OpenAI Service, was now generally available, a distinction that’s expected to bring a flood of new usage.
The news comes as Microsoft has looked at adding to the $1 billion stake in OpenAI it announced in 2019, two people familiar with the matter previously told Reuters. The news site Semafor reported earlier this month that Microsoft might invest $10 billion; Microsoft declined to comment on any potential deal.
Public interest in OpenAI surged following its November release of ChatGPT, a text-based chatbot that can draft prose, poetry or even computer code on command. ChatGPT is powered by generative artificial intelligence, which conjures new content after training on vast amounts of data — tech that Microsoft is letting more customers apply to use.
ChatGPT itself, not just its underlying tech, will soon be available via Microsoft’s cloud, it said in a blog post.
Microsoft said it is vetting customers’ applications to mitigate potential abuse of the software, and its filters can screen for harmful content users might input or the tech might produce.
The business potential of such software has garnered massive venture-capital investment in startups producing it, at a time funding has otherwise dried up. Already, some companies have used the tech to create marketing content or demonstrate how it could negotiate a cable bill.
Microsoft said CarMax, KPMG and others were using its Azure OpenAI service. Its press release quoted an Al Jazeera vice president as saying the service could help the news organization summarize and translate content.
Reporting By Jeffrey Dastin; Editing by Leslie Adler
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Jan 9 (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) is in talks to invest $10 billion into OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, which will value the San Francisco-based firm at $29 billion, Semafor reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The funding includes other venture firms and deal documents were sent to prospective investors in recent weeks, with the aim to close the round by the end of 2022, the report said.
Microsoft declined to comment, while OpenAI did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
This follows a Wall Street Journal report that said OpenAI was in talks to sell existing shares at a roughly $29 billion valuation, with venture capital firms such as Thrive Capital and Founders Fund buying shares from existing shareholders.
OpenAI, founded by Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) CEO Elon Musk and investor Sam Altman, made the ChatGPT chatbot available for free public testing on Nov. 30. A chatbot is a software application designed to mimic human-like conversation based on user prompts.
The Semafor report said the funding terms included Microsoft getting 75% of OpenAI’s profits until it recoups its initial investment once OpenAI figures out how to make money on ChatGPT and other products like image creation tool Dall-E.
On hitting that threshold, Microsoft would have a 49% stake in OpenAI, with other investors taking another 49% and OpenAI’s nonprofit parent getting 2%, the report said, without clarifying what the stakes would be until Microsoft got its money back.
Microsoft, which invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019, was working to launch a version of its search engine Bing using the AI behind ChatGPT, the Information reported last week.
Reporting by Aarati Krishna in Bengaluru; Editing by Savio D’Souza
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MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug 16 (Reuters) – Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google is combining the eyes and arms of physical robots with the knowledge and conversation skills of virtual chatbots to help its employees fetch soda and chips from breakrooms with ease.
The mechanical waiters, shown in action to reporters last week, embody an artificial intelligence breakthrough that paves the way for multipurpose robots as easy to control as ones that perform single, structured tasks such as vacuuming or standing guard.
Google robots are not ready for sale. They perform only a few dozen simple actions, and the company has not yet embedded them with the “OK, Google” summoning feature familiar to consumers.
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While Google says it is pursuing development responsibly, adoption could ultimately stall over concerns such as robots becoming surveillance machines, or being equipped with chat technology that can give offensive responses, as Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) and others have experienced in recent years.
Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) and Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) are pursuing comparable research on robots.
Google research scientist Fei Xia accepts a Coca-Cola can from a robot during a demonstration of AI technology at a company micro-kitchen in Mountain View, California, U.S. August 11, 2022. REUTERS/Paresh Dave
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“It’s going to take a while before we can really have a firm grasp on the direct commercial impact,” said Vincent Vanhoucke, senior director for Google’s robotics research.
When asked to help clean a spill, Google’s robot recognizes that grabbing a sponge is a doable and more sensible response than apologizing for creating the mess.
The robots interpret naturally spoken commands, weigh possible actions against their capabilities and plan smaller steps to achieve the ask.
The chain is made possible by infusing the robots with language technology that draws understanding of the world from Wikipedia, social media and other webpages. Similar AI underlies chatbots or virtual assistants, but has not been applied to robots this expansively before, Google said.
It unveiled the effort in a research paper in April. Incorporating more sophisticated language AI since then boosted the robots’ success on commands to 74% from 61%, according a company blog post on Tuesday.
Fellow Alphabet subsidiary Everyday Robots designs the robots, which for now will stay confined to grabbing snacks for employees.
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Reporting by Paresh Dave; Editing by Kenneth Li and Richard Chang
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Paresh Dave
Thomson Reuters
San Francisco Bay Area-based tech reporter covering Google and the rest of Alphabet Inc. Joined Reuters in 2017 after four years at the Los Angeles Times focused on the local tech industry.
July 18 (Reuters) – Wall Street ended lower on Monday after bank stocks erased earlier gains and Apple (AAPL.O) shares fell on a report saying the company plans to slow hiring and spending growth next year.
After posting solid gains to start the session following earnings from Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) and Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), the S&P financial sector (.SPSY) weakened into the close.
Apple shares reversed course to close down 2.1% at $147.1 on a Bloomberg report that said the company plans to slow hiring and spending growth next year in some units to cope with a potential economic downturn. read more
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Goldman Sachs advanced 2.5% as it reported a smaller-than-expected 48% slump in second-quarter profit, helped by strength in its fixed-income trading.
Worries about a larger one percentage point rate hike at the end of July eased following remarks from Fed officials last week that the policymakers could stick to a 75 basis point hike. read more
“It’s really hard to sustain upward momentum,” said Ross Mayfield, investment strategy analyst at Baird in Louisville, Kentucky. “And that’s kind of the story of bear markets.”
A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York City, U.S., July 13, 2022. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) fell 215.65 points, or 0.69%, to 31,072.61, the S&P 500 (.SPX) lost 32.31 points, or 0.84%, to 3,830.85 and the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC) dropped 92.37 points, or 0.81%, to 11,360.05.
Nine of the 11 major sectors of the S&P 500 lost ground, with healthcare (.SPXHC) and utilities (.SPLRCU) suffering the largest percentage drop, while energy (.SPNY) took the biggest gain.
Earnings from big technology companies next week will be closely watched, after their shares came under immense selling pressure through much of this year.
Among other tech stocks, Google parent Alphabet fell 2.5%. IBM declined 1.3%.
Volume on U.S. exchanges was 10.63 billion shares, compared with the 12.15 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.
Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 1.20-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 1.06-to-1 ratio favored decliners.
The S&P 500 posted one new 52-week high and 31 new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 30 new highs and 78 new lows.
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Reporting by Echo Wang in New York; Additional reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal, Bansari Mayur Kamdar and Sruthi Shankar in Bengaluru; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta, Anil D’Silva and Deepa Babington
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SEOUL, May 22 (Reuters) – Hyundai Motor Group said on Sunday it would invest an additional $5 billion in the United States by 2025 to strengthen collaboration with U.S. firms in advanced technology.
The investments, announced during a visit to Seoul by President Joe Biden, are for robotics, urban air mobility, autonomous driving and artificial intelligence, the group said.
Hyundai Motor Group, which houses Hyundai Motor Co (005380.KS) and Kia Corp (000270.KS), on Friday announced plans to invest $5.5 billion in Georgia to build electric vehicle (EV) and battery facilities. read more
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Hyundai’s new EV and battery manufacturing facilities will be based in the southern “right to work” state, where labour unions are less prevalent and cannot require workers to join.
Biden, a Democrat, has described himself as the most pro-union president in history. But the deal, announced by Georgia’s Republican governor, showed the compromises the president may have to make as he woos investment overseas.
“Hyundai and any company investing in the United States would benefit greatly from entering into partnerships with some of the most highly skilled, dedicated, and engaged workers in the world, anywhere you can find; and that is American union members,” Biden said.
“Every venture to manufacture electric vehicles and electric vehicle batteries would be made stronger by a collective bargaining relationship with our unions.”
Hyundai Motor Group Executive Chair Euisun Chung did not comment on U.S. unions.
The new investment brings its planned U.S. total through 2025 to about $10 billion, above the $7.4 billion it announced last year.
The world’s third-biggest automaker by vehicles sales did not say where in the United States the additional $5 billion would be invested.
The auto group said on Wednesday it would invest 21 trillion won ($16 billion) through 2030 to expand its EV business in South Korea. read more
($1 = 1,273.5900 won)
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Reporting by Trevor Hunnicutt, Heekyong Yang and Jack Kim; Editing by Bradley Perrett and Lisa Shumaker
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May 11 (Reuters) – The science-fiction is harder to see in Google’s second try at glasses with a built-in computer.
A decade after the debut of Google Glass, a nubby, sci-fi-looking pair of specs that filmed what wearers saw but raised concerns about privacy and received low marks for design, the Alphabet Inc (GOOGL.O) unit on Wednesday previewed a yet-unnamed pair of standard-looking glasses that display translations of conversations in real time and showed no hint of a camera.
The new augmented-reality pair of glasses was just one of several longer-term products Google unveiled at its annual Google I/O developer conference aimed at bridging the real world and the company’s digital universe of search, Maps and other services using the latest advances in artificial intelligence.
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“What we’re working on is technology that enables us to break down language barriers, taking years of research in Google Translate and bringing that to glasses,” said Eddie Chung, a director of product management at Google, calling the capability “subtitles for the world.”
Selling more hardware could help Google increase profit by keeping users in its network of technology, where it does not have to split ad sales with device makers such as Apple Inc (AAPL.O)and Samsung Electronics CO (005930.KS)that help distribute its services.
Google also teased a tablet to be launched in 2023 and a smartwatch that will go on sale late this year, as it unveils a strategy to offer a group of products comparable to Apple.
But Google’s hardware business remains small, with its global market share in smartphones, for instance, under 1%, according to researcher IDC. Recently launched challengers in search along with ongoing antitrust investigations across the world into Google’s dominance in mobile software and other areas threaten to limit the company’s ability to gain steam in new ventures.
Alphabet shares fell 0.7% on Wednesday.
The reveal of the new glasses reflect the company’s growing caution amid greater scrutiny on Big Tech. When Google Glass was demonstrated at I/O in 2012, skydivers used it to live stream a jump onto a San Francisco building, with the company getting special air clearance for the stunt.
This time around, Google showed only a video of its prototype, which displayed translations for conversations involving English, Mandarin, Spanish and American Sign Language.
It did not specify a release date or immediately confirm that the device lacked a camera.
Separate to the gadget, Google earlier demonstrated a feature that eventually would let users take video of store shelves with wine bottles and ask the search app to perform functions like automatically identify options from Black-owned wineries.
Similarly, users later this year will be able to snap a photo of a product and locate nearby stores where it is available.
Also later this year, Maps will launch an immersive view for some big cities that fuses Street View and aerial images “to create a rich, digital model of the world,” Google said.
NEW HARDWARE
The tablet reverses Google’s decision three years ago to abandon making its own after poor sales. It shipped just 500,000 of those units, according to IDC.
The new tablet follows increased user interest and was announced early to inform buyers considering alternatives, Rick Osterloh, Google senior vice president for devices and services, told reporters.
He added that the Pixel Watch, which will not be compatible with Apple’s iPhones, will attract different users than devices from Google’s Fitbit, which is associated with health and fitness and was acquired last year for $2.1 billion.
Among other announcements, a relaunched Google Wallet app will virtually store drivers licenses in some areas of the United States later this year, mirroring a feature Apple debuted for Arizona on its iPhones in March.
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Reporting by Paresh Dave in Oakland, Calif. and Yuvraj Malik in Bengaluru. Editing by Paul Simao, Matthew Lewis, Nick Zieminski and Bernard Orr
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