Microsoft announce multimodal AI GPT-4 next week

On March 9, 2023, four Microsoft Germany employees talked about big language models as a "game changer" in a roughly one-hour informational event titled " AI in Focus - Digital Kickoff."

During the event, CTO Andreas Braun casually mentioned that GPT-4 will be unveiled next week and that the technology is now advanced enough to understand natural language in all languages. Braun spoke of multimodal models that can also process video.

The technology allows machines to use statistical data to gain an understanding of information that previously could only be read and understood by humans, and the technology has now reached a level where it is possible to apply this principle in almost all languages. It is therefore possible to ask a question in German and receive the answer in any other language.

Braun was joined at the meeting by Marianne Janik, managing director of Microsoft Germany. Janik commented on the disruption caused by AI in companies and emphasized the great value creation potential of artificial intelligence (AI). She spoke of the "iPhone moment" in current AI development and praised ChatGPT as an example. She emphasized that the integration of AI does not necessarily mean job losses, but rather serves to accomplish repetitive tasks more effectively and in new ways.

Janik emphasized that the use of AI requires a great deal of expertise and that traditional job profiles will change as a result of the new possibilities. At the same time, entirely new exciting professions are emerging. She recommended that companies form internal competence centers to train employees in the use of AI and to pool ideas for projects. It is also important to think about the migration of old technologies, she said.

Microsoft will not use customer data to train models. But at least for research partner OpenAI, Microsoft is not categorically ruling out adapting ChatGPT policies. Daniel highlighted the wide availability of AI integrations in the Microsoft Azure platform, Outlook and Microsoft Teams.

Clemens Sieber, Senior AI Specialist, and Holger Kenn, Chief Technologist Business Development AI & Emerging Technologies, presented some practical use cases their teams at Microsoft are currently working on. They provided insights into the technical background and explained what multimodal AI is, which can transcribe text not only according to images, but also music and video. Microsoft products are already equipped with Responsible AI, and through the cloud, "millions of queries can be mapped and answered through the APIs.

It's the right time to get started, according to Microsoft.