Microsoft closes Azure subscription for individuals to access OpenAI in mainland China

Owing to local regulatory requirements, only enterprise customers are eligible to subscribe to Azure OpenAI Service in mainland China

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Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service has been widely used by developers on the mainland to access the ChatGPT creator’s application programming interface. Photo: Shutterstock

Published: 6:30pm, 21 Oct 2024

Microsoft on Monday closed individual OpenAI subscriptions in mainland China via its Azure cloud-computing platform, which had been the only legitimate way for such users to access the ChatGPT creator’s services, months after the American start-up blocked its application programming interface (API) in “unsupported countries and territories”.

The restriction on individual users was made “due to local regulatory requirements”, which means “only enterprise customers are eligible to subscribe to Azure OpenAI Service”, according to an email Microsoft sent to its cloud users that was seen by the South China Morning Post.

The Azure OpenAI Service has been widely used by local developers to legitimately access the US firm’s API and connect their own services to the artificial intelligence (AI) powerhouse’s various technologies, including its flagship GPT-4o model. APIs are the software intermediary that allows different systems to communicate and share data or features with each other.

Microsoft, a major investor in OpenAI, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

The action taken by Microsoft means the “only legitimate method” for individuals to access OpenAI’s API in China has been blocked, according to JetSquirrel.cloud, a user of social media platform Xiaohongshu, where he shared the email about the Azure restriction.