AT&T has joined forces with technology heavyweights Microsoft and OpenAI to develop a tool dubbed ‘Ask AT&T‘. According to a blog post, the tool follows the design of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, will aid in the productivity of AT&T’s employees, specifically coders and developers. The company says the generative AI tool would be introduced to the workforce in the coming weeks, marking AT&T employees as “the first generation of true corporate users of this new capability.”
AI Tool ‘Ask AT&T’: A Boon for Workplace Efficiency
Assisting in the transfer of old programs to cloud-based platforms, Ask AT&T is instrumental in modernizing processes while freeing up developers to address “new and more complex challenges and business needs,” says an AT&T spokesperson. The company believes that the AI tool will enhance its employees’ effectiveness, efficiency, and creativity at their tasks.
However, the tool’s accuracy and appropriateness of results are the responsibility of the AT&T users utilizing it. Microsoft and AT&T are already long-standing partners, mostly focused on 5G technology and cloud expansion. Of course, Microsoft is also a $10 billion investor in OpenAI and the company’s strongest partner.
Security Measures and Anticipations for the AI-powered Tool
In terms of safety, AT&T that rigorous tests for potential data leakage scenarios yielded positive results. The company ensures the tool does not allow questions or responses entered to be uploaded to the public version of ChatGPT, thereby securing information. Employees have been advised against using the public version of chatGPT for official tasks, as the data could potentially be shared with non-AT&T users.
The decision to leverage AI was influenced by OpenAI’s announcement to make its ChatGPT software accessible to large corporations to develop their own ChatGPT-like bots. Despite concerns from other corporations like Alphabet Inc., and Apple, AT&T reaffirms its optimism about AI’s potential to revolutionize businesses.