Microsoft adds Grok - the most unhinged chatbot - to Azure AI buffet

Microsoft has added xAI's Grok 3 family to its Azure AI Foundry platform, seemingly unfazed by the firm's rivalry with Microsoft investee OpenAI or the chatbot's recent descent into conspiracy territory.

Azure AI Foundry is a cloud-based platform for creating and managing AI apps and agents, which Microsoft says is used by "more than 70,000 enterprises and digital natives" – a figure that obscures its actual popularity by failing to differentiate corporate adoption from individual adoption.

Now, "we’re bringing Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models from xAI to our ecosystem, hosted and billed directly by Microsoft," said Frank Shaw, chief communications officer at Microsoft, in a blog post.

"Developers can now choose from more than 1,900 partner-hosted and Microsoft-hosted AI models, while managing secure data integration, model customization and enterprise-grade governance."

It's another bit of evidence that OpenAI, which has received billions of ...