Want to get familiar with the OpenAI API?

If you'd like to get familiar with the OpenAI API, but don't want to potentially incur separate costs, and you're a current Azure customer, there's also the Azure Open AI Service which gives much of the same functionality. Although, Whisper isn't there, sadly.

There's currently a waitlist for this service - it's a bit strange to see this on an Azure resource, but given the popularity, it makes sense.

First: To apply, visit here and fill out the form including the Subscription ID(s) you'd like to enter. You can supply your own Azure subscription ID (such as a Visual Studio Subscription with monthly credits), and/or a customer's subscription ID that might be interested in having you develop OpenAI-powered tools for them.

Second: Wait. Microsoft indicates up to 10 days for a decision (my onboarding email came in 5 days).

After you get the email and the subscriptions you've specified are onboarded, you can create the Azure OpenAI Service resource in the subscription(s)s you specified and utilize all of the recent OpenAI LLMs, including GPT-3.5

I've classified the Microsoft Open AI service as "The same but.." and here, the 'but' is that as an Azure service, there's a ton of value-add that the OpenAI services in Azure provide. In addition to consolidated billing, MS SLAs, VNet integrations, and being able to provision and manage the resource(s) with ARM/Bicep and Terraform, the most exciting piece is that if you have large datasets, one is able to utilize Apache Spark (Synapse/SynapseML) in conjunction with the OpenAI service.

If you're new to Apache Spark, my feeling is that there are better tools coming right around the corner, but it's an option if you'd like to utilize Azure OpenAI with your Synapse-based datasets right now.

But, what about GPT-4 you ask?!

There's another, separate waitlist. After you're approved for the above, visit here. 

First, select that you've already been onboarded. On the next part of the form, copy and paste the ApplicationID that's in the acceptance email (it's in the subject line) and fill out the rest of the information.

Before long you will be utilizing GPT-4 with your own business data already in Azure!