Microsoft is making a big bet about artificial intelligence. The company announced “phase three” of its relationship with OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT and Dall-E 2, among other impressive/worrying AI demonstrations, including “a multi-billion dollar multi-year investment” and a commitment to that Microsoft will be the exclusive cloud provider for the AI ​​company.

Taken on its own, this is a natural extension of a pre-existing financial relationship, but against the backdrop of the past two weeks of brutal tech layoffs, including major cutbacks at Microsoft’s own augmented and virtual reality teams, it seems such a good sign. like anyone Microsoft sees offering AI-enabled services as a far more viable future than the metaverse.

XR is hard