Microsoft is reportedly developing a new AI model known as MAI-1 to compete with existing offerings from Google and Anthropic, although the specific use case for the model has yet to be determined. The Information reported on this development, suggesting that MAI-1 may also challenge OpenAI, a company in which Microsoft has made a substantial investment.
Microsoft’s CTO Kevin Scott mentioned in a recent blog post their plans to continue building large supercomputers for OpenAI in the future. This collaboration is seen as mutually beneficial and poised to have a long-lasting impact. Oversight of MAI-1 is entrusted to Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of Google DeepMind and former CEO of AI start-up Inflection, who joined Microsoft along with his team in March.
According to sources, MAI-1 is distinct from the models previously released by Inflection, for which Microsoft acquired the intellectual property for $65 million. This new model is expected to be significantly larger than Microsoft’s previous open-source models, requiring more data and computing power and therefore, a higher cost. MAI-1 is anticipated to have approximately 500 billion parameters, less than OpenAI’s GPT-4 which has over 1 trillion but larger than smaller models from other companies. Microsoft recently unveiled its Phi-3 mini model, which has 3.8 billion parameters.