Microsoft Teams Up with Harvard to Revolutionize AI Health Assistance

Microsoft is reportedly forging a collaboration with Harvard Medical School to enhance its AI assistant, Copilot, with health-related content. This strategic partnership signifies Microsoft's broader initiative to diminish its reliance on OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

According to insiders, plans are in place for an update to be released as soon as this month, enabling Copilot to leverage information from Harvard Health Publishing for health-related queries. Microsoft will be compensating Harvard with a licensing fee for this integration.

Dominic King, Microsoft's Vice President of AI Health, mentioned in an interview that the aim is for Copilot to deliver responses closely mirroring the advice a user might receive from a medical professional, shifting away from the current data available.

Until now, Copilot predominantly utilized models from OpenAI within its suite of applications such as Word and Outlook. To further reduce dependence on this startup, Microsoft has started incorporating Anthropic's Claude and is also developing proprietary AI models.