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Come inside the tech lab making accessibility fun
It all started with gaming, modifications for joysticks, and controllers that allow disabled veterans to once again play their favorite video games. Now, Microsoft’s Inclusive Tech Lab is a haven of innovation and creativity, featuring toys and tools created by and for the disability community. Come along as Program Manager Solomon Romney takes GZERO on an exclusive tour of the lab making accessibility awesome.
Watch more interviews from Global Stage.
Accessibility is critical for the world's disability community
An estimated 1.6 billion people, roughly 18% of the world’s population, are part of the disability community, and that number grows each year. Yet Microsoft’s Chief Accessibility Officer Jenny Lay-Flurrie says only 2% of websites globally are accessible. As Disability Pride Month comes to an end, GZERO’s Tony Maciulis spoke to her about confronting challenges at work and home while embracing the diversity of different abilities.
Microsoft’s Inflection deal gets a closer look
The UK’s antitrust regulator is scrutinizing Microsoft’s unique relationship with Inflection AI. The PC giant did what some have called an “acqui-hire” — not buying the company outright, but rather hiring many of its former leaders and employees instead.
Microsoft poached the once-$4 billion startup’s co-founders Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan as well as “most of its staff.” It paid $650 million to license Inflection’s technology, which is how investors will get their returns. Now, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is looking at whether the deal is a “de facto merger,” a decision it’s expected to make by Sept. 11.
Microsoft is already facing scrutiny for its $13 billion investment in OpenAI in the US and UK, choosing to relinquish its non-voting board seat to stave off further criticism last week. We’re watching for how Microsoft fares in court, and whether it changes its tack in competing for the top talent and tech in AI development.An image of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is seen on a mobile device screen in this illustration.
OpenAI announces next model and new safety committee
OpenAI announced that it is training a new generative AI model to eventually replace GPT-4, the industry-standard model that powers ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot.
But the OpenAI board of directors also said that it’s forming a new Safety and Security Committee to advise it on the risks posed by powerful AI. After the previous board of directors abruptly fired CEO Sam Altman for not being candid with them in November 2023, OpenAI staffers and lead investor Microsoft pressured the board to rehire Altman. It worked: Altman rejoined the company, and most of the old board members resigned.
OpenAI has sought to be an industry leader in generative AI while staying in the good graces of regulators looking to rein in its ambitions. OpenAI took the Biden administration’s voluntary pledge to mitigate AI risks in July 2023, and Altman recently joined the Department of Homeland Security’s new Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board.
The US has done little to curb the ambitions of its most prominent AI firms, but that good grace is dependent on the appearance of being a reliable and trustworthy actor — one that will propel Silicon Valley ahead of other global tech hubs while building AI that can help humanity, not harm it.
People walk behind the logo of SoftBank Corp in Tokyo.
Hard Numbers: SoftBank’s hardy investment, Grok gets cash infusion, Humane’s rescue plan, Kenya’s tech upgrade, News Corp and OpenAI strike a deal
6 billion:Elon Musk’s AI startup, xAI, has raised $6 billion from venture capital investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and Sequoia Capital, plus Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and Kingdom Holding Company. The new funding round boosts the value of xAI, which makes the AI chatbot Grok, to $24 billion. Musk is a cofounder of OpenAI but severed ties with the firm in 2018 and has since sued the ChatGPT maker, alleging it abandoned its founding principles.
750 million: Humane, the company that recently released an AI-powered pin to scathing reviews, is reportedly looking for a buyer to swoop in. While customers have to cough up $699 for the signature pin, a corporate buyer would need to pay between $750 million and $1 billion — if the company’s current management fetches any interest, that is.
1 billion: Microsoft and the UAE-based tech giant G42 are pouring $1 billion into a geothermal-powered data center in Kenya. This East African investment is the first big announcement since Microsoft invested $1.5 billion in G42 in April, a deal brokered by the Biden administration. Microsoft and G42 also pledged to work on local language and skills training initiatives with the Kenyan government and companies in the country.
250 million: OpenAI struck a licensing deal with News Corp., the parent company of The Wall Street Journal, reportedly worth $250 million over five years. News Corp’s stock rose on the announcement, and the deal represents a burgeoning revenue stream for news companies. But the deal isn’t without critics: The Information’s founder Jessica Lessin wrote that publishers like News Corp need to know their worth with AI companies, hungry for content, and not rush into any deal for “relative pennies.”
Mind your clicks — AI is watching
Privacy experts warn that new computers with built-in artificial intelligence technology mean Big Tech is increasingly watching what you do.
On May 21, Microsoft announced that it’s building AI directly into Windows operating systems that power PCs. The company announced a new line of what they’re calling Copilot+ PCs, available on June 18, built onto Microsoft’s own Surface devices, as well as on Windows devices from manufacturers such as Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung.
Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot, which runs on OpenAI’s GPT-4o AI model, will factor into many aspects of a user’s computing experience, whether they’re typing on Microsoft Word or browsing the web.
But the star of the show is something called Recall, which watches your activity in a way that can be summoned on-demand when you’re frustrated and looking for something you once saw. “With Recall, you can access virtually what you have seen or done on your PC in a way that feels like having photographic memory,” Microsoft wrote in a blog post.
Cooper Quintin, senior public interest technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said he is concerned about the issue of data collection when it comes to new AI technology.
“This will create a treasure trove of sensitive information for law enforcement, spies, or hackers,” he said.
Microsoft has said Recall processes and stores content locally on the device, rather than sending it to the cloud, to boost privacy of users.
Calli Schroeder, senior counsel and global privacy counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that only ameliorates some concerns. “Constant screenshots of user actions for Recall and other AI programs is a form of surveillance,” she said. “Keeping the data on-device addresses some of the risks of that surveillance but doesn’t change the fact that user activities are being monitored and recorded in great detail and volume.” She noted that data collection is nothing new, but the increased scale presents fresh potential for “misuse, breach, and interference.”
Microsoft’s website says that users can “limit which snapshots Recall collects,” but Quintin and Schroeder both said they hope that the default experience is that users have to opt into using the features rather than opt out.The United Kingdom’s Information Commissioner's Office, the country’s data watchdog, told the BBC that it has contacted Microsoft to request additional information about how Recall works. “We are making enquiries with Microsoft to understand the safeguards in place to protect user privacy," a spokesperson said.
Schroeder said she hopes that technology companies that build AI systems will allow adequate outside monitoring from civil society groups, technologists, researchers, and regulators. “Governments are some of the only bodies with power to force enough disclosure of system structure to confirm whether that is accurate and whether those measures adequately protect people,” she said.
Manufacturers are racing to get their own devices up to speed too. Ahead of the Microsoft announcement, Dell announced its Latitude AI PCs in February (and has seen its stock double in the past six months on AI hype) while HP released its suite of AI PCs in March. And it won’t just be PCs: Google announced it’s adding AI features, powered by its Gemini model, to Chromebooks. Meanwhile, Apple has suggested that its iOS 18 operating system, which powers iPhones, will come with a suite of generative AI features when it’s released in the coming months. And its next chips for Macs and iPads, called M4, should provide the computing power needed in the likely case the company wants to follow its rival’s lead.
Microsoft’s announcement also signals that AI could quickly infiltrate all of our computing experiences — whether we want it or not, and whether we’re aware of it or not. While users still have to search out AI chatbots, they may soon be impossible to avoid.
FILE PHOTO: The 76th Cannes Film Festival - Press conference for the film "Asteroid City" in competition - Cannes, France, May 24, 2023. Cast member Scarlett Johansson attends.
Hard Numbers: Scarlett Johansen’s voice on ChatGPT, Sony Music’s warning, Energy drain, Stability AI’s instability, Sharing the love — and the GPUs
2: Film star Scarlett Johanssonturned down OpenAI’s Sam Altman twice when he asked to use her voice for ChatGPT’s speech applications. She said no, but OpenAI has released a voice called “Sky” that sounds similar to Johansson. The actress (well, at least her voice) starred in the 2013 film “Her”— which Altman has called his favorite movie — portraying a disembodied AI that the protagonist becomes infatuated with. OpenAI says it hired another actress to voice “Sky,” but the company has now removed the voice “out of respect for Ms. Johansson.”
700: Sony Music sent letters to 700 AI developers and music streaming companies telling them it’s “opting out” of letting them use its content for training models. That includes musical compositions as well as lyrics, recordings, music videos, and album artwork. Last year, AI-generated songs featuring the fake voices of Drake and The Weeknd became a viral smash on social media — but music publishers aren’t in the habit of licensing their assets for free.
30: Microsoft reported that between 2020 and 2023 its energy emissions jumped 30%, a sign of the huge toll that artificial intelligence could take on the planet. Microsoft wants to be carbon negative by 2030, but its generative AI initiatives have hampered progress toward that goal.
1 billion: Amid a cash crunch, Stability AI is reportedly exploring a sale. The startup, which makes the Stable Diffusion image generator, was valued at $1 billion in 2022. The biggest question is who can buy it? The Biden administration has chilled the merger and acquisition market, taking an especially aggressive approach to litigating alleged antitrust allegations throughout Silicon Valley.American Airlines planes parked at the terminal gates at the Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.
Hard Numbers: Deplaning quicker, AI is working at work, Searching for answers, Microsoft chooses France
17: Since implementing an AI-powered system that directs airplanes to the nearest gate with the shortest taxiing time in 2021, American Airlines says it saves 17 hours a day in taxi time and 1.4 million gallons of jet fuel each year. The Smart Gating system started at Dallas Ft. Worth and is now in place at six major airports.
75: According to a new study from Microsoft, 75% of so-called knowledge workers are using generative AI at work, a figure that’s nearly doubled in six months. The study is from a major technology company that has billions invested in the success of generative AI tools and sells its services directly to companies. But this data still suggests that employees worldwide are gaining some comfort with, and finding use for, AI tools at the office.
67: Google is adding AI-generated search results summarizing answers to users’ queries. That’s a potentially troubling development for some publishers that could lose up to 67% of their traffic, according to an estimate from the advertising company Raptive. The firm predicted that these changes could lead to $2 billion in losses to online creators who depend on Google to send them search traffic.
4.3 billion: On Monday, Microsoft pledged $4.3 billion to build cloud and AI infrastructure in France, an announcement that comes two months after it invested $16 million in the French AI startup Mistral. Microsoft president Brad Smith made the announcement at French President Emmanuel Macron’s “Choose France” event, intended to attract foreign investment in the country.