Microsoft Announces Principles to Foster Innovation, Competition in AI

 Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, speaks at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), in Barcelona, Spain February 26, 2024. (Reuters)
Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, speaks at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), in Barcelona, Spain February 26, 2024. (Reuters)
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Microsoft Announces Principles to Foster Innovation, Competition in AI

 Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, speaks at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), in Barcelona, Spain February 26, 2024. (Reuters)
Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, speaks at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), in Barcelona, Spain February 26, 2024. (Reuters)

Microsoft President Brad Smith on Monday announced a set of principles to foster innovation and competition in artificial intelligence in recognition of its role as a market leader in this technology, a move that could stave off worries about its dominance.

The move by the US tech giant came amid concerns from rivals and antitrust regulators about Microsoft's market power, boosted recently by its collaboration with ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

Microsoft has pushed chatbots into its core products such as its Office software and Bing search engine over the past year, attracting business customers eager to try the tech industry's next breakthrough.

"As we enter a new era based on artificial intelligence, we believe this is the best time to articulate principles that will govern how we will operate our AI datacenter infrastructure and other important AI assets around the world," Smith said in a speech to be delivered at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The AI Access Principles aim "in part to address Microsoft's growing role and responsibility as an AI innovator and a market leader", he said.

"By publishing these principles, we are committing ourselves to providing the broad technology access needed to empower organizations and individuals around the world to develop and use AI in ways that will serve the public good," Smith said.

The principles include providing access and support for AI developers, making AI models and development tools broadly available to software applications developers around the world, and making available public APIs (Application Programming Interface) to enable developers to access and use AI models on Microsoft Azure.

Microsoft will also not use non-public information or data from the building and deployment of developers' AI models in Microsoft Azure to compete with those models, and also allow Microsoft Azure customers to easily export and transfer their data to another cloud provider.



SDAIA Receives Recognition for Innovative Projects at WSIS Summit in Geneva

SDAIA’s nominated projects represented a distinguished set of technological initiatives that demonstrated innovation, relevance, and impact in their respective fields - SPA
SDAIA’s nominated projects represented a distinguished set of technological initiatives that demonstrated innovation, relevance, and impact in their respective fields - SPA
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SDAIA Receives Recognition for Innovative Projects at WSIS Summit in Geneva

SDAIA’s nominated projects represented a distinguished set of technological initiatives that demonstrated innovation, relevance, and impact in their respective fields - SPA
SDAIA’s nominated projects represented a distinguished set of technological initiatives that demonstrated innovation, relevance, and impact in their respective fields - SPA

The Saudi Data & AI Authority (SDAIA) received certificates for its nominated projects, which were recognized among the best entries at the 2025 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Prizes held in Geneva, Switzerland, highlighting SDAIA’s innovative contributions to the fields of data and artificial intelligence (AI).

SDAIA’s nominated projects represented a distinguished set of technological initiatives that demonstrated innovation, relevance, and impact in their respective fields.

Out of 973 submissions from various countries, they were chosen after an expert evaluation conducted by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), SPA reported.

The nominated projects included the government cloud-computing platform “Deem,” which provides integrated and flexible cloud services for government entities; the “Nafath” application for biometric identity verification; the “Serti” service within the “Tawakkalna” app that enables users to display their certified academic qualifications; the “Tahseen” project, which uses AI to restore and enhance historical media; and the “Allam” and “Sawtak” projects, both of which represent a significant leap in supporting and processing Arabic using large language models and speech recognition technologies.

These achievements reflect the Kingdom’s commitment, through SDAIA, to reinforcing its global standing as a trusted authority in data and AI, advancing the national digital transformation agenda, and supporting the goals of Saudi Vision 2030. They also contribute to enhancing the Kingdom’s regional and international competitiveness in technology and innovation.