Microsoft’s Purge of AI Exclusivity: Why the Tech Giant is Limiting Redmond Police’s Access to Its New Face-Recognition Software

The question of how we use technology for good has never been more urgent. Microsoft has broken a new frontier in tech ethics by changing its AI sales policy to human rights protectors. Expanding on a partnership with Microsoft starting in 2020, IDA has recently been provided an account to promote the use of its AI tools for human rights. This breakthrough will empower human rights professionals to do their jobs more efficiently and accurately, and may hopefully encourage more companies to embrace ethical innovations.

Microsoft's Ethical AI Framework: Setting New Boundaries

In fact, it’s not just lip service that Microsoft has paid in the name of ethical AI. These principles have also served as the basis for real action, such as building legal restrictions into the very service itself. The most recent Azure OpenAI collaboration for instance restricts the use of its tools for facial recognition applications to police ‘within the US’. In a critical turn of events, the specific wording of the updated conduct language explicitly prohibits enabling the US police ‘to identify individuals through the scrutiny of video imagery’. With these loopholes shut tight, innovative ways of employing AI technologies in policing will move far away from scenarios whose potential ethical and privacy implications are closer to the unsettling possibilities explored in a short story.

Beyond Facial Recognition: A Comprehensive Approach

Microsoft’s bans fall well beyond the face. Globally, it has issued a blanket ban on the use of mobile cameras by law enforcement ‘in the wild’ – including for the purpose of identity verification via body-worn or dash-mounted cameras. Its policy implicitly declares a prohibition against the use of cameras in public spaces for the purpose of collecting and maintaining data about citizens.

The Azure OpenAI System: A Platform with Principles

A further sign of Microsoft’s commitment to ethical AI is Azure OpenAI, which includes API access to its own codes and models, through Microsoft’s cloud storage. In further developments of Chat GPT-4 Turbo, Microsoft has integrated cutting-edge text and image analyses in Vision while the company intends to use these innovations in the service of ethical AI. Its decision to enable the use of its generative AI services by federal agencies further illustrates Microsoft’s commitment to responsible AI use.

A Stand Against Unregulated Data Collection

The imposition of these rules coincides with a time when a renewed outcry over privacy has been spreading on the broader use of police departments deploying AI-powered tools to leverage machine learning on traffic stop and other civilian capture footage. With that Microsoft move, scholars note, there is counter-narrative to the news of runaway data collection that prioritises ethical considerations and transparency in AI-fuelled deployments.

Microsoft and the Global Tech Ethos: Leading by Example

The revised version of Microsoft’s code of conduct, with its strictures about law enforcement use of its technology, is the kind of leading-by-example that the tech world should become accustomed to setting. It’s not just that the US and other nations need to employ AI ethicists for surveillance technologies, but that the conversation about the moral roadmap for technology is an important one for us all to have. The tech industry, after all, should be the one setting the privacy and ethical standards. You heard me. The ACLU was right about Microsoft and the facial database. After deciding to deny request from the US government to explore its users’ private data that the agency had obtained via a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant, Google pushed back. Apple and others joined the charge, demonstrating that the tech industry has obligations to protect its users’ privacy even from law-enforcement demands.

About Microsoft

Microsoft has been an innovator since the first of our many decades of involvement in the computer industry. Our roots are in software, but our responsibility to provide technology in a way that maintains trust and respects individuals’ lives and privacy has grown with our reach. We continue to innovate with our digital generations.

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