Microsoft Corp is developing its artificial intelligence chip code-named “Athena” to power the technology behind AI chatbots like ChatGPT, The Information reported on Tuesday, citing two people familiar with the matter.
According to the report, a small group of Microsoft and OpenAI employees is testing the chip, which has been in development since 2019. The company, an early backer of ChatGPT’s owner OpenAI, has been working on it.
According to the report, the chips will train large-language models and support inference, which is needed for generative AI like ChatGPT, which process massive amounts of data, identifies patterns, and create new outputs that mimic human conversation.
According to the report, Microsoft hopes the chip will perform better than what it now buys from other vendors, saving it time and money on its costly AI initiatives. Amazon and Google, two other significant tech firms, also make their in-house AI chips.
Nvidia, a chip maker, currently dominates the market for these chips.
After ChatGPT’s success, Microsoft is speeding up the rollout, according to the report. To compete with Google and capitalize on its partnership with OpenAI, the Windows maker introduced Bing AI, its AI-powered search engine, earlier this year.
