During yesterday's keynote at Microsoft Build, Satya Nadella revealed that Microsoft is harnessing the power of OpenAI's GPT-3 technology to generate code from natural language input. Is this a breakthrough that will change our relationship to code?

We reported on Power Fx as Microsoft's New Language earlier this year, but now it has cropped up again and this time hand-in-hand with GPT-3, the amazingly effective auto-generating text program developed by OpenAI but licensed exclusively to Microsoft.

Microsoft initially formed its partnership with OpenAI in 2016 when Azure was adopted as OpenAI's primary cloud platform. Then in 2019 Microsoft made a major $1 billion investment in OpenAI which led, in September 2020, to Microsoft being granted an exclusive license for GPT-3, giving it access to its code whereas the rest of us have to make do with using it via its API.

The big news at Build is that GPT-3 is being integrated into Microsoft Power Apps, the low-code app development platform for people with little or no coding experience, that is part of the Microsoft Power Platform alongside Power BI, the business analytics tool, and Power Automate which creates automated workflows between Microsoft services or other third-party applications.

Microsoft Power Fx is the low-code open-source programming language used in PowerApps and now the integration of GPT-3 is intended to allow users to build apps using natural language - making the transition from low code to no code.

Explaining how GPT-3 will be used in PowerFx, Ryan Cunningham, Product Manager for Power Apps explains:

Trained with 175 billion parameters, GPT-3 is an advanced natural language AI model that implements deep learning to be able to both understand and produce human-like text based on a prompt in natural language.

By fine-tuning GPT-3 to understand how Power Fx formulas are constructed, we can leverage the model’s existing strengths in natural language input to give Power Apps makers the ability to describe logic just like they would to a friend or co-worker, and end up with the right formula for their app.

He uses this as his example:

Concluding:

Based on this input and context from your app, such as your table and controls, Power Apps will generate one or a few of the most relevant Power Fx formulas for you to select from, filtering out results that cannot pass the formula syntax check, and you can select the formula that you want to use. It’s that easy.     

Power Apps may seem like another small step along the road for harnessing the power of deep learning - but in the past we've been amazed by just how quickly AI can evolve from modest beginnings to wold domination.

More Information

From conversation to code: Microsoft introduces its first product features powered by GPT-3

Introducing Power Apps Ideas

Related Articles

Microsoft's New Language - Power FX

Open AI And Microsoft Exciting Times For AI 

The Unreasonable Effectiveness Of GPT-3

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