Science & Technology

Microsoft CEO Defends AI Pricetag

The CEO of Microsoft said that the decision of the technology giant to charge a fee of $30 per month for consumers’ access to artificial intelligence functions was fair and justified.

Microsoft CEO Defends AI Pricetag

The company has implemented AI-based technologies in the business version of its service Microsoft 365. The media reports that the expanded functionality, access to which is provided on a paid basis, has increased the monthly expenses of the technology giant’s customers by 58-83%. In this case, we mean the costs within the framework of commercial interaction of users with Microsoft, and not their general expenses related to all aspects of life.

The company’s executive director Satya Nadella, during a conversation with media representatives, said that the new pricing model is part of a large-scale transformation of the company’s technological structure, which gives the flagship product new facets. He also noted that the integration of artificial intelligence in terms of its form of existence should be considered as an Office branch, the predecessors of which are Word and Excel, and cloud services such as Teams. According to him, the new AI functions are of no less value and allow you to automate routine tasks, which helps to increase the level of productivity.

The value of Microsoft’s shares rose to a record high this week after it became known that the technology giant had asked Meta to start working together to turn a commercial version of the artificial intelligence configuration of the leader of the social media sphere into a publicly available product. Facebook Instagram and Threads owner’s large open source language model, known as LLaMA, will be available outside of academic use, by which was limited to the space of its application until now.

Meta responded affirmatively to Microsoft’s proposal, stating that the implementation of the decision on public access to the language model will make it better, since in this case the maximum number of developers will be able to conduct a stress test of the system and identify shortcomings.

Experts say that the financial policy of the developer of the Windows operating system, implemented as part of the spread of artificial intelligence, is logical and regular. According to them, this is due to the fact that the company’s software is actively used in the high-tech sector to increase productivity.

OpenAI charges $20 per month for the premium version of ChatGPT, and Microsoft charges a monthly fee of $19 for the business version of its generative programming assistant GitHub Copilot. Satya Nadella says that this virtual assistant has proven in practice the ability to increase productivity. According to him, this fact gives confidence that the integration of AI into Microsoft 365 will have a significant impact on sales, finance, and the work of the HR department and improve the processing of arrays of general knowledge.

As we have reported earlier, Google, Microsoft and OpenAI Limit AI Tools in Hong Kong.

Serhii Mikhailov

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Serhii’s track record of study and work spans six years at the Faculty of Philology and eight years in the media, during which he has developed a deep understanding of various aspects of the industry and honed his writing skills; his areas of expertise include fintech, payments, cryptocurrency, and financial services, and he is constantly keeping a close eye on the latest developments and innovations in these fields, as he believes that they will have a significant impact on the future direction of the economy as a whole.