Brian Eno is the composer of Windows 95
Microsoft’s former employee Nasr Nasr in an Instagram post said Microsoft’s failure to show Israel’s “war crimes that are powered by Azure” is a “betrayal of the company’s values”. Nasr added he was fired when he participated in a protest against the company’s relationship with Israel’s IMOD, which deals with artificial intelligence technology. Microsoft had last week said its AI was used in Gaza war.
A microsoft employee makes a statement on the 50th anniversary
A Microsoft employee has signed a petition calling for the software giant to stop selling technology to the Israeli military. “I joined Microsoft believing in its mission to ’empower every person’ and every organisation on the planet to achieve more,” the employee wrote. “If you must continue to work at Microsoft, I urge you to use your position…to hold Microsoft accountable to its own values,” he added.
Microsoft has tripled down on artificial intelligence
Microsoft, in an interview with Bloomberg, revealed it’s creating a new group of AI engineers as part of its transformation into a technology company. Microsoft said it is combining its AI platform work with its developer division to build software solutions for customers and their own teams. This comes after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg predicted that AI-powered apps would be built by AI engineers.
Microsoft raises prices and bundles features into its subscription service
Microsoft will bring its AI-powered chat service Copilot Pro to all Office 365 subscribers in US, said Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer of AI at work. “Our plan all along has been how do we bring this value to as many subscribers as possible in a way that works for them and for us,” Spataro said. Copilot Pro is free for subscribers.
The US is trying to restrict the world by prohibiting access to artificial intelligence chips and models
Microsoft CEO Brad Smith has said his company can meet “the needs of countries and customers around the world with the use of technology that was compliant with the rule” under the new restrictions. The US has restricted the use of advanced AI models within the borders of the US and its partner economies, including Iran, North Korea and China.
Donald Trump is not the only chaotic agent
Following US President-elect Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election, Google CEO Sundar Pichai took to Twitter and wrote, “Thank you for your confidence in us.” “We look forward to working with you to make this a better country,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy also wrote, “We’re looking forward to working together with you in your new administration.”
You can stream your own games on the cloud gaming platform
Microsoft is planning to support streaming of Xbox game libraries next month, the company’s president Sarah Bond has said. The platform will allow users to play and purchase Xbox games directly from the Xbox App on Android. Microsoft is also planning to test the capability to stream games that are not part of the existing Xbox Game Pass library.
The Three mile Island nuclear plant is going to power Microsoft’s data centers
Microsoft has signed a deal with Constellation Energy to buy nuclear power for data centre operations in the US. The agreement will allow Microsoft to run its data centers on “clean, carbon-free energy”. The company’s data centres, which are used for cloud computing and artificial intelligence programs, will be able to run again after the restart of the Three Mile Island power plant.
Microsoft’s new playground is called Copilot Pages
Microsoft announced a new feature, ‘prioritize my inbox’, to help Copilot users prioritise emails. It added that it will be available in Outlook later this month and later this month in Word. Users will also be able to teach Copilot the specific topics and people that are important to them later this year, Microsoft said.
Section 230 immunity could be loosened for intimate artificial intelligence deepfakes
Microsoft President Brad Smith has said that Congress should require AI system providers to use “state-of-the-art provenance tooling” to label synthetic content. “Congress should also require AI system providers to use state-of-the-art provenance tooling to label synthetic content,” he added. This comes after Taylor Swift’s nude photos were found to be made by a designer in Microsoft’s AI tool.