Microsoft

Microsoft employees are banned from using DeepSeek app, president says 

AI /

Microsoft employees aren’t allowed to use DeepSeek due to data security and propaganda concerns, Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith said in a Senate hearing today. “At Microsoft we don’t allow our employees to use the DeepSeek app,” Smith said, referring to DeepSeek’s application service (which is available on both desktop and mobile.) Smith […]

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Microsoft adopts Google’s standard for linking up AI agents

AI /

Microsoft says that it’s embracing Google’s recently launched open protocol for allowing AI “agents” to communicate with each other. On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it would bring support for Google’s Agent2Agent (A2A) spec to two of its AI development platforms, Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. Microsoft has also joined the A2A working group on

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Xbox consoles, controllers, and games are getting more expensive

Gaming /

Microsoft announced price increases on Thursday for its Xbox consoles, controllers, and some games. The affected consoles, which include Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S models, will increase in price between $80 and $100 each, depending on the console. These consoles were first released almost five years ago, with the basic Xbox Series S

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Microsoft’s most capable new Phi 4 AI model rivals the performance of far larger systems

AI /

Microsoft launched several new “open” AI models on Wednesday, the most capable of which is competitive with OpenAI’s o3-mini on at least one benchmark. All of the new pemissively licensed models — Phi 4 mini reasoning, Phi 4 reasoning, and Phi 4 reasoning plus — are “reasoning” models, meaning they’re able to spend more time

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Microsoft expects some AI capacity constraints this quarter

Enterprise /

An executive cautioned during Microsoft’s earnings call on Wednesday that customers might face AI service disruptions as demand outstrips the company’s ability to bring data centers online. Microsoft’s EVP and CFO Amy Hood said during the company’s fiscal 2025 third-quarter earnings call that the company may face AI capacity constraints as early as June. “We

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Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company’s code was written by AI

AI /

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that 20%-30% of code inside the company’s repositories was “written by software” — meaning AI — during a fireside chat with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Meta’s LlamaCon conference on Tuesday. Nadella gave the figure after Zuckerberg asked roughly how much of Microsoft’s code is AI-generated today. The Microsoft CEO

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Microsoft researchers say they’ve developed a hyper-efficient AI model that can run on CPUs

AI /

Microsoft researchers claim they’ve developed the largest-scale 1-bit AI model, also known as a “bitnet,” to date. Called BitNet b1.58 2B4T, it’s openly available under an MIT license and can run on CPUs, including Apple’s M2. Bitnets are essentially compressed models designed to run on lightweight hardware. In standard models, weights, the values that define

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Microsoft inks massive carbon removal deal powered by a paper mill

Enterprise /

Microsoft announced on Friday that it is buying 3.7 million metric tons of carbon removal credits from CO280, a project developer that works with pulp and paper mills. The purchase covers 12 years of emissions from CO280’s first carbon capture project at a mill on the Gulf Coast. CO280 expects the facility to start capturing

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