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ACCESS TO OPENAI PRODUCTS IN CHINA VIA MICROSOFT AZURE

Although OpenAI is restricting access to its platform in China, a recent report reveals that Chinese users can still use the company’s products through Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform. 

The close collaboration between microsoft and OpenAI has enabled the former to gain privileged access to the latter’s products, with the aim of expanding AI service offerings to enterprises. This is reported by The Information, which interviewed several Chinese customers confirming access to OpenAI’s conversational AI models. 

The report comes on the heels of OpenAI’s announcement late last month that it would ban access to its APIs for Chinese customers as of July 9. Unlike ChatGPT, which is an end product offered by OpenAI and its partners, APIs allow customers to develop their own products by leveraging OpenAI’s technologies, creating specific applications that ChatGPT cannot cover. 

According to The Information, while OpenAI is blocking the use of the API in China, Microsoft’s Chinese customers can still access OpenAI’s AI models through Azure. The confirmation comes from three Chinese companies that said they have access to OpenAI models.

Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service allows users to integrate their data and run custom queries using AI-based language and image models. In addition to OpenAI’s products, Azure also offers solutions from Meta, Facebook’s parent company, to provide a diverse and customizable AI platform.

After the announcement of OpenAI, Microsoft confirmed that it will continue to offer Azure OpenAI services to users in Hong Kong. Currently, OpenAI is not supported in the Chinese territory and mainland China, it seems that Microsoft is applying a similar policy to Hong Kong to mainland China as well. 

OpenAI pays Microsoft to offer its services on Azure and pays a commission on API revenues to the software company. Reports indicate that Microsoft is entitled to most of OpenAI’s profits until the latter repays the substantial investment made by its investors.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot service is already banned in China, where authorities strictly control public access to information. Chinese residents cannot access ChatGPT without alternative solutions, in line with government efforts to control what they consider propaganda. In parallel, the Chinese government has approved over a hundred local language models in an effort to develop a domestic AI industry.

However, U.S. restrictions on chips, which also affect those for AI, could make it difficult for Chinese companies to train these models. Models such as ChatGPT require tens of thousands of state-of-the-art GPUs for their computing power, and a large part of Nvidia’s $3.15 trillion market capitalization depends on its products leading in AI performance.