Microsoft

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft Corp. has filed a lawsuit against an organization alleging that it knowingly developed and used tools to bypass the security of Microsoft's cloud AI offerings to illegally access and generate harmful content, TechCrunch reports. The lawsuit, filed by Microsoft in December 2024 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, involves 10 unnamed defendants. According to the lawsuit filing, Microsoft alleges that these defendants unlawfully breached the Azure OpenAI service through the use of stolen customer credentials and customized software. azure op...

January 9, 2012 - After its December 12, 2024 release, Microsoft yesterday (January 8) open-sourced the small language model Phi-4 on the Hugging Face platform, allowing interested developers and testers to download, fine-tune, and deploy the AI model. Note: The model has only 14 billion parameters, yet it performs well in several benchmarks, even outperforming the much larger Llama 3.3 70B (nearly five times as many as Phi-4) and OpenAI's GPT-4o Mini; in...

Jan. 4 (Bloomberg) -- On Friday, local time, Microsoft announced in a blog post an ambitious plan to invest $80 billion (note: currently about 585,749 million yuan) in fiscal 2025 to build data centers capable of supporting the computing needs of artificial intelligence. More than half of that spending is expected to go to the U.S. market by June 2025, the end of the 2025 fiscal year, according to Brad Smith, Microsoft's vice chairman and president. Smith said, "The U.S. is currently leading the global AI race, thanks to...

December 27 news, technology media The Information yesterday (December 26) disclosed a Microsoft and OpenAI company contract documents, secretly for the General Artificial Intelligence (AGI) to put a price tag. 1AI queried the public information and attached the technical definition of general artificial intelligence (AGI) as follows: it refers to a hypothetical machine intelligence that is capable of understanding or learning any intellectual task that can be performed by a human being, and is designed to mimic the cognitive abilities of the human brain, with a broader range of adaptive and learning capabilities, and can be performed without specialized training in the...

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft is working to introduce in-house and third-party artificial intelligence models into its flagship AI product, Microsoft 365 Copilot, in a bid to move away from its current reliance on OpenAI technology and reduce operational costs, according to people familiar with the matter, Reuters reported. This is Microsoft's latest move to reduce its reliance on OpenAI, which it supports. Previously, Microsoft had heavily touted its early access to OpenAI models.In March 2023, when Microsoft released 365 Copilot, its main...

December 19, 2011 - GitHub, Microsoft's code hosting platform, released a blog post today (December 19) announcing a free subscription to GitHub Copilot Free, which allows developers to use the GitHub Copilot AI service for free in the Visual Studio Code code editor. GitHub announced last week that the number of developers on its platform exceeded 150 million, and this free subscription means that 150 million developers around the world can use GitHub Copilot AI services in the VS Code...

December 17, 2011 - Microsoft has sought to make the next generation of Windows PCs "Copilot+ PCs" and "AI PCs" by adding a physical Copilot key to the keyboards of all new Windows 11 AI PCs certified as "Copilot+ PCs", as well as a physical Copilot key on the keyboards of all new Windows 11 AI PCs certified as "Copilot+ PCs". To that end, all new Windows 11 AI PCs certified as "Copilot+ PCs" have a physical Copilot key on their keyboards. However, this hasty decision is now being regretted by Microsoft, who have had to advise some users to remap the key's functionality. According to 1AI, Copilot's evolution on Windows 11...

Microsoft is partnering with nonprofits, universities, governments, OpenAI, and other tech companies to participate in the Harvard Law School Library's Institutional Data Initiative (IDI) and the Open University-led CORE project to increase the amount of data accessible to the public and to enhance the diversity of data sources, cultures, languages, and topics, ultimately benefiting everyone. 1AI briefly describes the IDI and CORE projects: Institutional Data Initiative (IDI): IDI is dedicated to unlocking and refining high-quality data, the first of which comes from the Harvard Law School Library's collections. The goal is for AI to solve...

Microsoft today announced Phi-4, a 14B-parameter "state-of-the-art" small language model (SLM) that specializes in complex reasoning in areas such as mathematics, in addition to traditional language processing. Phi-4 is the latest addition to the Phi family of small language models, and officials say it demonstrates Microsoft's commitment to continue exploring the boundaries of SLMs. Possibilities. Officials say Phi-4 outperforms comparable and larger models in mathematical reasoning thanks to a number of technological advances, including the use of high-quality synthetic datasets, carefully selected high-quality organic data, and post-training innovations. Its mathematical ...

December 13, 2012 - Microsoft appears to be testing a new feature called Scareware Blocker with the Edge browser, according to an early morning X post from longtime browser feature digger Leopeva64. The officially unannounced feature is currently only available in the Edge browser's "Privacy, Search & Services" settings, and only exists in an unreleased beta version. According to its brief description, the feature could help Microsoft detect potential tech scams through AI...

According to the FT, Microsoft's head of AI, Mustafa Suleiman, is putting together a new consumer health team that includes a number of the core people he worked with during his time at Google DeepMind. This suggests that health is becoming a major playing field as tech giants scramble to explore the commercial potential of AI. Note: British entrepreneur Mustafa Suleiman is the co-founder of DeepMind and has been involved in AI since 2010. Mustafa Suleiman has tapped former DeepMind...

Dec. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Microsoft is testing a new update to the Copilot app on Windows 11 that it says transforms it from an Edge-powered web app to a "native" Windows 11 app. However, apart from cosmetic changes, the actual Copilot experience is still web-dependent and not fundamentally different from previous versions, WindowsCentral reports. 1AI notes that Microsoft describes the new Copilot as follows: "With this update, the...

Beijing time this morning, according to The Information, citing sources familiar with the matter, Google has recently pressured the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to lift Microsoft's exclusive agreement to host OpenAI technology on its cloud servers. The comments came after the FTC asked Google about Microsoft's business practices. It is understood that the purpose of the FTC inquiry was to conduct a broader investigation. A range of Microsoft competitors such as Google and Amazon want to host OpenAI's AI services themselves, with the aim of eliminating the need for their cloud customers to both...

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleiman has taken issue with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's latest statement that AGI is not achievable with current hardware, The Verge reported tonight. Note: Altman recently said that AGI can be achieved with current hardware. In an interview, Suleiman noted that this goal may be a decade away. When it comes to the definition of "existing hardware", based on The Verge's criteria of "one to two generations ahead of existing hardware", Suleiman responded that AGI would be difficult to achieve under these conditions...

Microsoft issued a press release on December 5, announcing that it will launch the Copilot Vision AI feature in preview form for Copilot Pro users in the United States. 1AI previously reported in October that Microsoft had started inviting some Microsoft Edge users to test Copilot Vision. 1AI has attached the following Copilot Vision features and functionality: Real-time Understanding: Copilot Vision is able to understand in real-time what the user is...

In a November 26th blog post, Microsoft announced the integration of Azure OpenAI endpoints in its LlamaParse to leverage the GPT-4o family of models to enhance the extraction of unstructured data and parsing of multimodal documents, and to seamlessly interface with the Azure AI Search Vector Database to build a complete Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) workflow. LlamaParse Introduction Microsoft LlamaParse is a document parser designed for Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) with the primary goal of...

Microsoft Office is known for its Connected Experiences feature, which analyzes user-created content to provide design recommendations, editing suggestions, data insights, and more. However, 1AI notes that @nixCraft, a blogger at cybersecurity blog Cyberciti.biz, claims that Microsoft's Connected Experiences feature automatically grabs data from users' Word and Excel documents and uses it to train the company's AI models. What's even more troubling is that the feature is turned on by default,...

Nov. 21, 2011 - Microsoft published a blog post yesterday (Nov. 20) announcing the release of the AI Shell command line tool in a public preview. Introduction to AI Shell The tool is designed to simplify coding, troubleshoot bugs, and automate workflows through AI intelligence, providing developers and IT professionals with an intelligent command line experience, marking another significant advancement in Microsoft's AI integration strategy. At the heart of AI Shell is the Azure OpenAI Agent and Copilot i...

Microsoft announced a number of new features at the Ignite conference it hosted that are designed to further enhance the intelligence of Microsoft 365 Copilot. The most notable of these is Copilot Actions, which is now in private preview. The feature allows users to automate repetitive daily tasks such as summarizing Teams meetings, generating weekly reports, and even preparing meeting materials with simple prompts.Copilot Actions is designed to be a one-time setup for users to allow the AI to self...

Silicon Valley startup d-Matrix on Tuesday announced the start of shipments of its first artificial intelligence chip aimed at providing services such as chatbots and video generation. d-Matrix has raised more than $160 million (currently about Rs 1,158 million) in funding so far, including an investment from Microsoft's venture capital arm. Early customers are testing sample chips and full shipments are expected next year, the company said. Santa Clara, California-based d-Matrix did not name specific customers, but said Super Micro Co.

Microsoft has announced that it will hold an offline hacker conference called "Zero Day Quest" (Zero Day Quest), designed to encourage researchers to discover high-risk security vulnerabilities in software that affects cloud computing and artificial intelligence workloads. Tom Gallagher, vice president of engineering at Microsoft's Security Response Center, said, "This new hacking event will be the largest of its kind, and we're offering an additional $4 million in prizes (IT Home note: currently about 28.938 million yuan) for researchers working in high-impact areas, especially cloud computing, and we're looking for a new way for researchers to discover vulnerabilities in software that affect cloud computing and artificial intelligence workloads. ...

U.S. tech giant Microsoft has opened its first Japanese research and development center in Tokyo, focusing on combining robotics with artificial intelligence, with an inauguration ceremony taking place on Nov. 18, NHK reported. The R&D center, called Microsoft Research Asia Tokyo, is the latest in a series of technology labs Microsoft has opened around the world. The lab is understood to plan to focus on the application of so-called embodied AI in manufacturing, healthcare and other industries, and will also work with major Japanese companies and universities. Microsoft said the company was impressed with Japan's expertise in robotics. Microsoft ...

The Associated Press reported that the Vatican City State and U.S. technology company Microsoft announced on the same day that a digital version of St. Peter's Basilica, "replicated" with AI, was officially launched under the cooperation between the two sides. The "St. Peter's Basilica" experience is the result of a partnership between the Vatican, Iconem (a startup specializing in cultural heritage digitization services) and Microsoft, and is designed to provide people with an unprecedented opportunity to explore Vatican City's most famous church. Visitors will be able to experience the Basilica through two AI-driven immersive exhibitions and an interactive website. The project was launched to celebrate the 2025 Jubilee...

Technology media outlet mwpro published a blog post on Nov. 12 reporting that according to the Microsoft 365 update roadmap, Microsoft plans to introduce a new control option for Copilot in mid-December that will allow users to control whether or not to send web search queries to Microsoft Bing. Users will be able to disable or enable web searches through the new control option, which can be accessed from the "..." menu, which IT House has attached a screenshot of below: If users disable web search, they will be notified that Copilot's replies will not include...