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Microsoft now has a lone leader overseeing consumer AI for the first time. DeepMind<\/a> cofounder Mustafa Suleyman is joining the company from rival Inflection AI. Suleyman will try to push the consumer-facing Copilot assistant<\/a> into the future, preparing for what may be a long battle with Google<\/a> for artificial intelligence supremacy among Silicon Valley\u2019s Big Five companies.<\/p>\n Suleyman\u2019s official title will be executive vice president and CEO of a new division called Microsoft AI, reporting directly to CEO Satya Nadella. Joining him will be fellow Inflection AI<\/a> cofounder Kar\u00e9n Simonyan, who takes the title of chief scientist.<\/p>\n \u201cMessy\u201d could be one way to describe Microsoft\u2019s Copilot rollout. Despite its quick jump out of the starting blocks to take the lead over Google, Bloomberg<\/em> reported<\/a> in January that Bing\u2019s market share hardly moved the needle against its search rival. In addition, a Microsoft engineer raised flags<\/a> earlier this year about the safety of OpenAI\u2019s DALL-E 3 and Copilot, even taking his case to the FTC<\/a>. Further complicating matters, Google\u2019s AI efforts may be in for an enormous boost as it\u2019s reportedly in talks with Apple to power the iPhone maker\u2019s generative AI tools<\/a>.<\/p>\n I\u2019m excited to announce that today I\u2019m joining @Microsoft<\/a> as CEO of Microsoft AI. I\u2019ll be leading all consumer AI products and research, including Copilot, Bing and Edge. My friend and longtime collaborator Kar\u00e9n Simonyan will be Chief Scientist, and several of our amazing\u2026<\/p>\n \u2014 Mustafa Suleyman (@mustafasuleyman) March 19, 2024<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n In announcing his move to Microsoft, Suleyman posted<\/a> on X (Twitter) that \u201cseveral of our amazing teammates\u201d from Inflection AI will join him and Simonyan in Microsoft AI. But that may be an understatement. Bloomberg<\/em> reported<\/a> on Tuesday that Microsoft is instead \u201chiring most of the staff from his Inflection AI startup.\u201d In a blog post<\/a> announcing the changes, Inflection said it plans to \u201clean into our AI studio business\u201d in an apparent pivot into the enterprise and away from its consumer-facing Pi chatbot.<\/p>\n Suleyman cofounded DeepMind in 2010, four years before Google bought the British-American AI startup for a sum reported to be between $400 million and $650 million. Suleyman left DeepMind in 2019 to join Google, and three years later, he left to cofound Inflection AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve known Mustafa for several years and have greatly admired him as a founder of both DeepMind and Inflection, and as a visionary, product maker, and builder of pioneering teams that go after bold missions,\u201d Nadella wrote<\/a> in a Microsoft blog post. The CEO described the incoming Inflection expats as \u201csome of the most accomplished AI engineers, researchers, and builders in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Nadella stressed that Microsoft\u2019s partnership with OpenAI<\/a> is still a top priority. The ChatGPT maker<\/a> provides the underlying generative AI models for Copilot. \u201cOur AI innovation continues to build on our most strategic and important partnership with OpenAI,\u201d he wrote. \u201cWe will continue to build AI infrastructure inclusive of custom systems and silicon work in support of OpenAI\u2019s foundation model roadmap, and also innovate and build products on top of their foundation models.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n