Facing More Nimble Rivals, OpenAI Won't Bend

Customers have asked to run OpenAI models on non-Microsoft cloud services or on their own local servers, but OpenAI has no immediate plans to offer such options, Semafor reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. From the report: That means there's one area where rivals of the ChatGPT creator have an edge: flexibility. To use OpenAI's technology, paying customers have two choices: They can go directly through OpenAI or through investment partner Microsoft, which has inked a deal to be the exclusive cloud service for OpenAI. Microsoft will not allow OpenAI's models to be available on other cloud providers, according to a person briefed on the matter. Companies that exclusively use rivals, such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud or Oracle, can't be OpenAI customers.But Microsoft would allow OpenAI models to be offered "on premises" in which customers build their own servers. Creating such solutions would pose some challenges, particularly around OpenAI's intellectual property. But it is technically feasible, this person said.

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