(Yicai) Oct. 18 -- Microsoft will terminate its Azure OpenAI service for individual developers in the Chinese mainland starting Oct. 21, according to an email sent by the US software giant to many developers.

The service discontinuation is being implemented due to regulatory requirements, according to the notice received by developers early yesterday. However, enterprise clients in the mainland will still be able to continue using the service, Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft noted.

After OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, stopped its application programming interface service in the mainland in early July, Microsoft's Azure OpenAI service became the sole compliant channel for local users to access the world-leading artificial intelligence model.

When OpenAI announced its API service termination in June, Microsoft's sales team assured its Azure OpenAI service would not face regulatory obstacles, a developer told Yicai. "Microsoft's stance was that they would resolve any compliance risk issues," the developer noted.

California-based OpenAI is entitled to 20 percent of Microsoft's income from selling OpenAI GPT services, according to the pair's revenue-sharing agreement.

Microsoft's move to terminate the service might indirectly push more individual and small-to-medium developers in the mainland to use large language models of domestic AI companies, some developers said to Yicai.

Many users have switched to Chinese LLMs after OpenAI terminated its service in the mainland. For example, the API call volume of iFlytek surged after OpenAI shut down its service, a senior executive of the Hefei-based AI tech developer previously said on the Shenzhen bourse's investor interaction platform.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev