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Microsoft to Invest $700 Million to Boost Poland's Cybersecurity

Microsoft's Vice Chair and President, Brad Smith (L) and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk (R) react during a press conference following their meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Warsaw, Poland, 17 February 2025. EPA/LESZEK SZYMANSKI
Microsoft's Vice Chair and President, Brad Smith (L) and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk (R) react during a press conference following their meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Warsaw, Poland, 17 February 2025. EPA/LESZEK SZYMANSKI
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Microsoft to Invest $700 Million to Boost Poland's Cybersecurity

Microsoft's Vice Chair and President, Brad Smith (L) and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk (R) react during a press conference following their meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Warsaw, Poland, 17 February 2025. EPA/LESZEK SZYMANSKI
Microsoft's Vice Chair and President, Brad Smith (L) and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk (R) react during a press conference following their meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Warsaw, Poland, 17 February 2025. EPA/LESZEK SZYMANSKI

Microsoft plans to invest an additional 700 million dollars in Poland to improve Polish cybersecurity in cooperation with the country's armed forces, the company's president said on Monday without elaborating.
In a joint press conference with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Microsoft President Brad Smith said the investment would be for a second phase of the already completed $1 billion Polish data center project announced in 2020.
The data center was opened in 2023, providing cloud services to businesses and government institutions.

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Microsoft Looks to Boost AI Performance in European Languages

FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
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Microsoft Looks to Boost AI Performance in European Languages

FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Microsoft signage is seen at the company's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, US, January 18, 2023. REUTERS/Matt Mills McKnight/File Photo

US tech behemoth Microsoft is investing millions of dollars to funnel more European-language data into AI development, company president Brad Smith told AFP Monday.

With today's leading AI models mostly trained on material in English, "the survival of these languages and the health of these cultures is quite literally at stake" without a course correction, Smith said in an interview.

AI models are "less capable when it is in a language that has insufficient data," he added -- which could push more users to switch to English even when it is not their native language.

Microsoft will from September set up research units in the eastern French city Strasbourg to "help expand the availability of multilingual data for AI development" in at least 10 of the European Union's 24 languages, including Estonian and Greek.

The work will include digitizing books and recording hundreds of hours of audio.

"This isn't about creating data for Microsoft to own. It is about creating data for the public to be able to use," Smith said, adding that the information would be shared on an open-source basis.

The US-based company has in recent months striven to position itself as especially compatible with a gathering political push for European technological sovereignty.

Leaders in the bloc have grown increasingly nervous at their dependency on US tech firms and infrastructure since Donald Trump's reelection to the White House.

In June, Microsoft said it was stepping up cooperation with European governments on cybersecurity and announced new "data sovereignty" measures for its data centers on the continent.

Smith said that Monday's announcement was just the latest evidence of the company's commitment to Europe.

Most leading AI firms are American or Chinese, although Europe has some standouts like France's Mistral or Franco-American platform Hugging Face.

Away from Microsoft, some European initiatives such as TildeLM are pushing to develop local-language AI models.

The Windows and Office developer also said Monday that it was working on a digital recreation of Paris' Notre-Dame cathedral that it plans to gift to the French state, as well as digitizing items from the country's BNF national library and Decorative Arts Museum.