Microsoft Hires DeepMind Co-Founder Suleyman To Run Consumer AI, Hires Most of Inflection AI Startup Staff

Microsoft has named Mustafa Suleyman head of its consumer artificial intelligence business, hiring most of the staff from his Inflection AI startup as the software giant seeks to fend off Alphabet's Google in the fiercely contested market for AI products. From a report: Suleyman, who co-founded Google's DeepMind, will report to Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella and oversee a range of projects, such as integrating an AI Copilot into Windows and adding conversational elements to the Bing search engine. His hiring will put Microsoft's consumer AI work under one leader for the first time.

Inflection, a rival of Microsoft's key AI partner OpenAI, is exiting its Pi consumer chatbot effort and shifting to selling AI software to businesses. Karen Simonyan, Inflection's co-founder, will join Microsoft as chief scientist for the new consumer AI group. In the past year, Nadella has been revamping his company's major products around artificial intelligence technology from OpenAI. Under the Copilot brand, Microsoft has blended an AI assistant into products including Windows, consumer and enterprise Office software, Bing and security tools. With Google and others trying to catch up, Nadella's multibillion-dollar investment in OpenAI has given Microsoft a first-mover advantage. And yet, 13 months after unveiling an AI-enhanced Bing search, the company has made few gains in that market, which remains dominated by Google.

AI search

[Iamthecheese]

I don't really understand how men of such hubris as to have made both Bing and Google's current iterations could have risen to that power in the first place. How do you make a new thing worse than the old thing, and remain high on your own farts long enough for ten years of consumer backlash to be ignored? This market is very ripe for Yahoo or something new to capture. All it would take is Google's index size, a dash of existing AI, and a whole lot of being willing to give people what they want: negated search terms, no mixing in of "sponsored results", and not trying to act like Big Brother.

Re:

[gweihir]

Probably some "alpha" dynamic where people mistake "alphas" for leaders, when they are not. Happens all the time. The collapse of Credit Suisse (which had more assets than Microsoft in 2022) was another such case.

Co-pilot is so good

[Ferocitus]

it could patch fucked up windows on a Boeing.

Re:

[DarkRookie2]

So that is what happened. They used ChatGPT to look for instruction on how to install the door.

Next Year's Headlines

[StormReaver]

Next year's headlines will read: "Microsoft has fired Mustafa Suleyman and all of the staff from his Inflection AI startup."

Re:

[gweihir]

Yep. If they can keep this mindless and deranged AI hype up until then.

Why wait for regulatory capture?

[nightflameauto]

This is Microsoft deciding they aren't going to wait for the regulatory capture angle to stifle innovation in the AI field. They'll just find ways to absorb as much competition in the AI field as they can as quickly as they can and hope that nobody manages to spring ahead of them without enough notice to move to absorb them as well.