Microsoft and Mistral AI announce new partnership to accelerate AI innovation and introduce Mistral Large first on Azure By Eric Boyd, Corporate Vice President, Azure AI Platform, Microsoft https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/microsoft-and-mistral-ai-announce-new... ----- Il commento di Luca Bertuzzi: This is a mind-blowing announcement. Mistral AI, the French company that has been fighting tooth and nail to water down the #AIAct's foundation model rules, is partnering up with Microsoft. So much for 'give us a fighting chance against Big Tech'. The first question that comes to mind is: was this deal in the making while the AI Act was being negotiated? That would mean Mistral discussed selling a minority stake to Microsoft while playing the 'European champion' card with the EU and French institutions. If so, this whole thing might be a masterclass in astroturfing, and it seems unrealistic for a partnership like this to be finalised in less than a month. Many people involved in the AI Act noted how Big Tech's lobbying on GPAI suddenly went quiet toward the end. That is because they did not need to intervene since Mistral was doing the 'dirty work' for them. Remarkably, Mistral's talking points were extremely similar to those of Big Tech rather than those of a small AI start-up, based on their ambition to reach that scale. The other question is how much the French government knew about this upcoming partnership with Microsoft. It seems unlikely Paris was kept completely in the dark, but cosying up with Big Tech does not really sit well with France's strive for 'strategic autonomy'. Especially since the agreement includes making Mistral's large language model available on Microsoft's Azure AI platform, while France has been pushing for an EU cybersecurity scheme to exclude American hyperscalers from the European market. Still today, and I doubt it is a coincidence, Mistral has announced the launch of Large, a new language model intended to compete directly with OpenAI's GPT-4. However, unlike previous models, Large will not be open source. In other words, Mistral is no longer (just) a European leader and is backtracking on its much-celebrated open source approach. Where does this leave the start-up vis-à-vis EU policymakers as the AI Act's enforcement approaches? My guess is that someone will inevitably feel played. https://twitter.com/BertuzLuca/status/1762197130616209765 oppure https://www.linkedin.com/posts/luca-bertuzzi-186729130_introducing-mistral-l...