Microsoft has scored a big win in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), gaining an exclusive license for OpenAI’s GPT-3 language model.

OpenAI is one of the leading AI research labs. Elon Musk has been one of the biggest critics of AI, believing it poses an existential threat to humanity. Musk was one of the original founders of OpenAI, in the hopes that responsible AI development could help avert disaster.

GPT-3 is “an autoregressive language model with 175 billion parameters, 10x more than any previous non-sparse language model.” The model uses deep learning to better emulate human language patterns.

Microsoft’s latest announcement builds on their existing partnership with OpenAI, which was expanded in May.

”Today, I’m very excited to announce that Microsoft is teaming up with OpenAI to exclusively license GPT-3, allowing us to leverage its technical innovations to develop and deliver advanced AI solutions for our customers, as well as create new solutions that harness the amazing power of advanced natural language generation,” writes Kevin Scott – Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Microsoft.

”We see this as an incredible opportunity to expand our Azure-powered AI platform in a way that democratizes AI technology, enables new products, services and experiences, and increases the positive impact of AI at Scale. Our mission at Microsoft is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more, so we want to make sure that this AI platform is available to everyone – researchers, entrepreneurs, hobbyists, businesses – to empower their ambitions to create something new and interesting.”

Scott acknowledges that, at this point, it’s hard to imagine the many ways GPT-3 will impact the industry. The partnership, however, ensures Microsoft will continue to be on the forefront of AI development.