Microsoft Bans US Police Departments From Using Enterprise AI Tool

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Microsoft has changed its policy to ban U.S. police departments from using generative AI through the Azure OpenAI Service, the company's fully managed, enterprise-focused wrapper around OpenAI technologies. Language added Wednesday to the terms of service for Azure OpenAI Service prohibits integrations with Azure OpenAI Service from being used 'by or for' police departments in the U.S., including integrations with OpenAI's text- and speech-analyzing models. A separate new bullet point covers 'any law enforcement globally,' and explicitly bars the use of 'real-time facial recognition technology' on mobile cameras, like body cameras and dashcams, to attempt to identify a person in 'uncontrolled, in-the-wild' environments.

The new terms leave wiggle room for Microsoft. The complete ban on Azure OpenAI Service usage pertains only to U.S., not international, police. And it doesn't cover facial recognition performed with stationary cameras in controlled environments, like a back office (although the terms prohibit any use of facial recognition by U.S. police). That tracks with Microsoft's and close partner OpenAI's recent approach to AI-related law enforcement and defense contracts. Last week, taser company Axon announced a new tool that uses AI built on OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo model to transcribe audio from body cameras and automatically turn it into a police report. It's unclear if Microsoft's updated policy is in response to Axon's product launch.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.