Microsoft announces principles to foster AI innovation

Microsoft President Brad Smith has announced a comprehensive framework of principles aimed at nurturing innovation and bolstering competition within the realm of artificial intelligence (AI).

The initiative acknowledges Microsoft’s prominent position as a market leader in AI technology and signals a proactive approach to addressing concerns regarding its market dominance.

“As we enter a new era based on artificial intelligence, we believe this is the best time to articulate principles that will govern how we will operate our AI datacenter infrastructure and other important AI assets around the world,” Smith said in a speech to be delivered at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The move by the U.S. tech giant comes amidst mounting concerns voiced by competitors and antitrust regulators regarding Microsoft’s growing market influence, particularly highlighted by its recent partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

Over the past year, Microsoft has strategically integrated chatbots into its core offerings, including its Office software suite and Bing search engine. This strategic move has garnered significant attention from business customers keen on exploring the cutting-edge innovations shaping the future of the tech industry.

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The AI Access Principles aim “in part to address Microsoft’s growing role and responsibility as an AI innovator and a market leader,” Smith said.

“By publishing these principles, we are committing ourselves to providing the broad technology access needed to empower organizations and individuals around the world to develop and use AI in ways that will serve the public good,” he added.

The principles include providing access and support for AI developers, making AI models and development tools broadly available to software applications developers around the world, and making available public APIs (Application Programming Interface) to enable developers to access and use AI models on Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft has also committed to refraining from utilizing non-public information or data obtained during the construction and deployment of developers’ AI models in Microsoft Azure for competitive purposes.

Furthermore, Azure customers will have seamless access to export and transfer their data to alternative cloud providers, ensuring flexibility and freedom of choice in their cloud services.