microsoft

microsoft-cancels-blizzard-survival-game,-lays-off-1,900

Microsoft cancels Blizzard survival game, lays off 1,900

Activision Blizzard, Biz & IT, gaming, layoffs, mergers, microsoft / /

Survival game won’t survive —

Job cuts hit Xbox, ZeniMax businesses, too, reports say.

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Activision Blizzard survival game

Enlarge / Blizzard shared this image teasing a now-cancelled game in 2022.

Blizzard Entertainment/Twitter

The survival game that Blizzard announced it was working on in January 2022 has reportedly been canceled. The cut comes as Microsoft is slashing jobs a little over four months after closing its $69 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition.

Blizzard’s game didn’t have a title yet, but Blizzard said it would be for PC and console and introduce new stories and characters. In January 2022, Blizzard put out a call for workers to help build the game.

The game’s axing was revealed today in an internal memo from Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer seen by publications including The Verge and CNBC that said:

Blizzard is ending development on its survival game project and will be shifting some of the people working on it to one of several promising new projects Blizzard has in the early stages of development.

Spencer said Microsoft was laying off 1,900 people starting today, with workers continuing to receive notifications in the coming days. The layoffs affect 8.64 percent of Microsoft’s 22,000-employee gaming division.

Another internal memo, written by Matt Booty, Microsoft’s game content and studios president, and seen by The Verge, said the layoffs are hitting “multiple” Blizzard teams, “including development teams, shared service organizations and corporate functions.” In January 2022, after plans for the merger were first announced, Bobby Kotick, then-CEO of Activision Blizzard, reportedly told employees at a meeting that Microsoft was “committed to trying to retain as many of our people as possible.”

Spencer said workers in Microsoft’s Xbox and ZeniMax Media businesses will also be impacted. Microsoft acquired ZeniMax, which owns Bethesda Softworks, for $7.5 billion in a deal that closed in March 2021.

After a bumpy ride with global regulators, Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard purchase closed in October. Booty’s memo said the job cuts announced today “reflect a focus on products and strategies that hold the most promise for Blizzard’s future growth, as well as identified areas of overlap across Blizzard and Microsoft Gaming.”

He claimed that layoffs would “enable Blizzard and Xbox to deliver ambitious games… on more platforms and in more places than ever before,” as well as “sustainable growth.”

Spencer’s memo said:

As we move forward in 2024, the leadership of Microsoft Gaming and Activision Blizzard is committed to aligning on a strategy and an execution plan with a sustainable cost structure that will support the whole of our growing business. Together, we’ve set priorities, identified areas of overlap, and ensured that we’re all aligned on the best opportunities for growth.

Laid-off employees will receive severance as per local employment laws, Spencer added.

Additional departures

Blizzard President Mike Ybarra announced via his X profile today that he is leaving the company. Booty’s memo said Ybarra “decided to leave” since the acquisition was completed. Ybarra was a top executive at Microsoft for over 20 years, including leadership positions at Xbox, before he started working at Blizzard in 2019.

Blizzard’s chief design officer, Allen Adham, is also leaving the company, per Booty’s memo.

The changes at the game studio follow Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick’s exit on January 1.

Microsoft also laid off 10,000 people, or about 4.5 percent of its reported 221,000-person workforce, last year as it worked to complete its Activision Blizzard buy. Microsoft blamed those job cuts on “macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities.”

Today’s job losses also join a string of recently announced tech layoffs, including at IBM, Google, SAP, and eBay and in the gaming community platforms Unity, Twitch, and Discord. However, layoffs following Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard deal were somewhat anticipated due to expected redundancies among the Washington tech giant’s biggest merger ever. This week, Microsoft hit a $3 trillion market cap, becoming the second company to do so (after Apple).

Microsoft cancels Blizzard survival game, lays off 1,900 Read More »

playstation-has-blocked-hardware-cheating-device-cronus-zen,-others-may-follow

PlayStation has blocked hardware cheating device Cronus Zen, others may follow

anticheat, Call of Duty, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, cheating, cronus, cronus zen, gaming, microsoft, PlayStation 5, Sony, xbox / /

What’s a little anti-recoil between friends? —

No more using a mouse and keyboard on PS5, or using aiming mods, for now.

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Ad showing

Enlarge / Who doesn’t want less recoil? Unless, that is, you’re someone competing against the person getting this benefit with a $100 “emulation” device.

Cronus

The Cronus Zen describes itself as a hardware tool for “universal controller compatibility,” letting you plug in a third-party controller, an Xbox controller into a PlayStation, or even your keyboard and mouse into a console. But you can also use its scripting engine to “amplify your game” and set up “GamePacks” to do things like reduce recoil animations in games like Call of Duty. And that is where Cronus seems to have gotten into trouble.

As first noted by the Call of Duty news channel CharlieIntel, the latest update to the PlayStation 5’s system (24.01-08.60.00) software blocks the Cronus from connecting. The update is “NOT mandatory,” Cronus claims in a notice on its website, so Zen players can hold off and keep playing. Still, there is “currently no timetable on a fix … it could be 24 (hours), 24 days, 24 months, we won’t know until we’ve dug into it.” There is, for now, a “Remote Play Workaround” for those already too far updated.

Ars attempted to reach Cronus for comment and reached out to Sony as well and will update this post with any new information.

The Cronus Zen, which costs $100 or more and is available on Amazon and at GameStop, among other outlets, does claim to offer accessibility and third-party compatibility options for players. But what has caught gamers’ attention, and Sony’s, is the wealth of GamePacks available for various games. Some single-player games, like Hogwarts Legacy and Cyberpunk 2077, are represented, but it’s the offerings for Call of Duty, Battlefield, Destiny 2, and other online multiplayer games that likely drew Sony’s ire.

Just a peek at the Apex Legends GamePack page suggests Zen mods “inspired by” the game, with options for “Aim Assist,” “Anti-Recoil Strength,” and “Fire Mods,” the latter of which can make you “harder to hit” and ping teammates when you are firing. Call of Duty: WarZone 3 mods include “Silent Aim. Insanely strong and not visible Aim Assist MOD!” The Zen was also capable of powering other cheat tools with emulated input, like AI-assisted aim assist.

Console manufacturers, already having more locked-down software than PCs, have taken up the cause of eliminating cheating at the hardware level. Microsoft issued a system-level ban on “unauthorized” accessories connecting to Xboxes in October. That had the unintended effect of cooling enthusiasm among fighting game enthusiasts and accessibility advocates. It did not, however, seem to block the Cronus, so long as you attached a compliant controller to it.

Individual game-makers have also attempted to block devices like the Cronus. Activision’s anti-cheat Ricochet tool called out “third-party hardware devices” that “act as a passthrough for controllers” in a blog post about its April 2023 updates. The same went for Ubisoft and Bungie, none of which called out the Cronus Zen in particular, but were signaling efforts to block it and similar devices, like the XIM and ReaSnow S1. Fortnite was ahead of the game, calling out the Cronus Zen and Cronus Max in late 2022.

None of these companies have offered a patch to the behavior of people who want to spend more than $100 and risk lifetime bans to earn undeserved points worth no tradable value.

Listing image by Cronus

PlayStation has blocked hardware cheating device Cronus Zen, others may follow Read More »

microsoft-network-breached-through-password-spraying-by-russian-state-hackers

Microsoft network breached through password-spraying by Russian-state hackers

Biz & IT, kremlin, microsoft, russian hacking, Security / /
Microsoft network breached through password-spraying by Russian-state hackers

Getty Images

Russia-state hackers exploited a weak password to compromise Microsoft’s corporate network and accessed emails and documents that belonged to senior executives and employees working in security and legal teams, Microsoft said late Friday.

The attack, which Microsoft attributed to a Kremlin-backed hacking group it tracks as Midnight Blizzard, is at least the second time in as many years that failures to follow basic security hygiene has resulted in a breach that has the potential to harm customers. One paragraph in Friday’s disclosure, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, was gobsmacking:

Beginning in late November 2023, the threat actor used a password spray attack to compromise a legacy non-production test tenant account and gain a foothold, and then used the account’s permissions to access a very small percentage of Microsoft corporate email accounts, including members of our senior leadership team and employees in our cybersecurity, legal, and other functions, and exfiltrated some emails and attached documents. The investigation indicates they were initially targeting email accounts for information related to Midnight Blizzard itself. We are in the process of notifying employees whose email was accessed.

Microsoft didn’t detect the breach until January 12, exactly a week before Friday’s disclosure. Microsoft’s account raises the prospect that the Russian hackers had uninterrupted access to the accounts for as long as two months.

A translation of the 93 words quoted above: A device inside Microsoft’s network was protected by a weak password with no form of two-factor authentication employed. The Russian adversary group was able to guess it by peppering it with previously compromised or commonly used passwords until they finally landed on the right one. The threat actor then accessed the account, indicating that either 2FA wasn’t employed or the protection was somehow bypassed.

Furthermore, this “legacy non-production test tenant account” was somehow configured so that Midnight Blizzard could pivot and gain access to some of the company’s most senior and sensitive employee accounts.

As Steve Bellovin, a computer science professor and affiliate law prof at Columbia University with decades of experience in cybersecurity, wrote on Mastodon:

A lot of fascinating implications here. A successful password spray attack suggests no 2FA and either reused or weak passwords. Access to email accounts belonging to “senior leadership… cybersecurity, and legal” teams using just the permissions of a “test tenant account” suggests that someone gave that test account amazing privileges. Why? Why wasn’t it removed when the test was over? I also note that it took Microsoft about seven weeks to detect the attack.

While Microsoft said that it wasn’t aware of any evidence that Midnight Blizzard gained access to customer environments, production systems, source code, or AI systems, some researchers voiced doubts, particularly about whether the Microsoft 365 service might be or have been susceptible to similar attack techniques. One of the researchers was Kevin Beaumont, who has had a long cybersecurity career that has included a stint working for Microsoft. On LinkedIn, he wrote:

Microsoft staff use Microsoft 365 for email. SEC filings and blogs with no details on Friday night are great.. but they’re going to have to be followed with actual detail. The age of Microsoft doing tents, incident code words, CELA’ing things and pretending MSTIC sees everything (threat actors have Macs too) are over — they need to do radical technical and cultural transformation to retain trust.

CELA is short for Corporate, External, and Legal Affairs, a group inside Microsoft that helps draft disclosures. MSTIC stands for the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center.

Microsoft network breached through password-spraying by Russian-state hackers Read More »

wordpad-out;-80gbps-usb-support-and-other-win-11-features-in-testing-this-month

WordPad out; 80Gbps USB support and other Win 11 features in testing this month

AI, chatgpt, copilot, microsoft, Tech, Windows, Windows 11 / /

Can’t stop won’t stop —

Microsoft’s next batch of Windows 11 feature updates is taking shape.

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Green USB-C cable

Windows 11’s big feature update in September included a long list of minor changes, plus the Copilot AI assistant; that update was followed by Windows 11 23H2 in late October, which reset the operating system’s timeline for technical support and security updates but didn’t add much else in and of itself. But Windows development never stops these days, and this month’s Insider Preview builds have already shown us a few things that could end up in the stable version of the operating system in the next couple of months.

One major addition, which rolled out to Dev Channel builds on January 11 and Beta Channel builds today, is support for 80Gbps USB 4 ports. These speeds are part of the USB4 Version 2.0 spec—named with the USB-IF’s typical flair for clarity and consistency—that was published in 2022. Full 80Gbps speeds are still rare and will be for the foreseeable future, but Microsoft says that they’ll be included the Razer Blade 18 and a handful of other PCs with Intel’s 14th-generation HX-series laptop processors. We’d expect the new speeds to proliferate slowly and mostly in high-end systems over the next few months and years.

Another addition to that January 11 Dev Channel build is a change in how the Copilot generative AI assistant works. Normally, Copilot is launched by the user manually, either by clicking the icon on the taskbar, hitting the Win+C key combo, or (in some new PCs) by using the dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard. In recent Dev Channel builds, the Copilot window will open automatically on certain PCs as soon as you log into Windows, becoming part of your default desktop unless you turn it off in Settings.

The Copilot panel will only open by default on screens that meet minimum size and resolution requirements, things that Windows already detects and takes into account when setting your PC’s default zoom and showing available Snap Layouts, among other things. Microsoft says it’s testing the feature on screens that are 27 inches or larger with 1,920 or more horizontal pixels (for most screens, this means a minimum resolution of 1080p). For PCs without Copilot, including those that haven’t been signed into a Microsoft account, the feature will continue to be absent.

The

Enlarge / The “richer weather experience on the Lock screen,” seen in the bottom-center of this screenshot.

Microsoft

Other additions to the Dev Channel builds this month include easy Snipping Tool editing for Android screenshots from phones that have been paired to your PC, custom user-created voice commands, the ability to share URLs directly to services like WhatsApp and Gmail from the Windows share window, a new Weather widget for the Windows lock screen, and app install notifications from the Microsoft store.

Microsoft hasn’t publicized any of the changes it has made to its Canary channel builds since January 4—this is typical since it changes the fastest, and the tested features are the most likely to be removed or significantly tweaked before being released to the public. Most of the significant additions from that announcement have since made it out to the other channels, but there are a couple of things worth noting. First, there’s a new Energy Saver taskbar icon for desktop PCs without batteries, making it easier to tell when the feature is on without creating confusion. And the venerable WordPad app, originally marked for deletion in September, has also been removed from these builds and can’t be reinstalled.

Microsoft doesn’t publish Windows feature updates on an exact cadence beyond its commitment to deliver one with a new version number once per year in the fall. Last year’s first major batch of Windows 11 additions rolled out at the end of February, so a late winter or early spring launch window for the next batch of features could make sense.

WordPad out; 80Gbps USB support and other Win 11 features in testing this month Read More »

bing-search-shows-few,-if-any,-signs-of-market-share-increase-from-ai-features

Bing Search shows few, if any, signs of market share increase from AI features

AI, Bing, Bing Chat, chatgpt, copilot, Google, microsoft, Windows 11, windows copilot / /

high hopes —

Bing’s US and worldwide market share is about the same as it has been for years.

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Bing Search shows few, if any, signs of market share increase from AI features

Microsoft

Not quite one year ago, Microsoft announced a “multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment” in OpenAI, a company that had made waves in 2022 with its ChatGPT chatbot and DALL-E image creator. The next month, Microsoft announced that it was integrating a generative AI chatbot into its Bing search engine and Edge browser, and similar generative AI features were announced for Windows in the apps formerly known as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, and other products.

Adding AI features to Bing was meant to give it an edge over Google, and reports indicated that Google was worried enough about it to accelerate its own internal generative AI efforts. Microsoft announced in March 2023 that Bing surpassed the 100 million monthly active users mark based on interest in Bing Chat and its ilk; by Microsoft’s estimates, each percentage of Google’s search market share that Bing could siphon away was worth as much as $2 billion to Microsoft.

A year later, it looks like Microsoft’s AI efforts may have helped Bing on the margins, but they haven’t meaningfully eroded Google’s search market share, according to Bloomberg. Per Bloomberg’s analysis of data from Sensor Tower, Bing usage had been down around 33 percent year over year just before the AI-powered features were added, but those numbers had rebounded by the middle of 2023.

Microsoft hasn’t given an official update on Bing’s monthly active users in quite a while—we’ve asked the company for an update, and will share it if we get one—though Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Medhi told Bloomberg that “millions and millions of people” were still using the new AI features.

StatCounter data mostly tells a similar story. According to its data, Google’s worldwide market share is currently in the low 90s, and it has been for virtually the entire 15-year period for which StatCounter offers data. Bing’s worldwide market share number over the same period has been remarkably stable; it was about 3.5 percent in the summer of 2009, when what had been known as Live Search was renamed Bing in the first place, and as of December 2023, it was still stuck at around 3.4 percent.

Recent US data is slightly more flattering for Microsoft, where Bing’s usage rose from 6.7 percent in December 2022 to 7.7 percent in December 2023. But that doesn’t necessarily suggest any kind of AI-fueled influx in new Bing search users—usage remained in the mid-to-high 6 percent range through most of 2023 before ticking up right at the end of the year—and Bing’s US usage has floated in that same 6–7 percent zone for most of the last decade.

It even seems like Microsoft is making moves to distance its AI efforts from Bing a bit. What began as “Bing Chat” or “the new Bing” is now known as Windows Copilot—both inside Windows 11 and elsewhere. Earlier this week, the Bing Image Creator became “Image Creator from Designer.” Both products still feature Bing branding prominently—the Copilot screen in Windows 11 still says “with Bing” at the top of it, and the Image Creator tool is still hosted on the Bing.com domain. But if these new AI features aren’t driving Bing’s market share up, then it makes sense for Microsoft to create room for them to stand on their own.

That’s not to say Google’s search dominance is assured. Leipzig University researchers published a study earlier this week (PDF) suggesting Google, Bing, and the Bing-powered DuckDuckGo had seen “an overall downward trend in text quality,” especially for heavily SEO-optimized categories like purchase recommendations and product reviews.

Bing Search shows few, if any, signs of market share increase from AI features Read More »

openai-opens-the-door-for-military-uses-but-maintains-ai-weapons-ban

OpenAI opens the door for military uses but maintains AI weapons ban

AI, AI ethics, AI safety, AI weapons, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, Cybersecurity, large language models, machine learning, microsoft, Military, openai, Pentagon, suicide prevention, US Defense Department / /

Skynet deferred —

Despite new Pentagon collab, OpenAI won’t allow customers to “develop or use weapons” with its tools.

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The OpenAI logo over a camoflage background.

On Tuesday, ChatGPT developer OpenAI revealed that it is collaborating with the United States Defense Department on cybersecurity projects and exploring ways to prevent veteran suicide, reports Bloomberg. OpenAI revealed the collaboration during an interview with the news outlet at the World Economic Forum in Davos. The AI company recently modified its policies, allowing for certain military applications of its technology, while maintaining prohibitions against using it to develop weapons.

According to Anna Makanju, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, “many people thought that [a previous blanket prohibition on military applications] would prohibit many of these use cases, which people think are very much aligned with what we want to see in the world.” OpenAI removed terms from its service agreement that previously blocked AI use in “military and warfare” situations, but the company still upholds a ban on its technology being used to develop weapons or to cause harm or property damage.

Under the “Universal Policies” section of OpenAI’s Usage Policies document, section 2 says, “Don’t use our service to harm yourself or others.” The prohibition includes using its AI products to “develop or use weapons.” Changes to the terms that removed the “military and warfare” prohibitions appear to have been made by OpenAI on January 10.

The shift in policy appears to align OpenAI more closely with the needs of various governmental departments, including the possibility of preventing veteran suicides. “We’ve been doing work with the Department of Defense on cybersecurity tools for open-source software that secures critical infrastructure,” Makanju said in the interview. “We’ve been exploring whether it can assist with (prevention of) veteran suicide.”

The efforts mark a significant change from OpenAI’s original stance on military partnerships, Bloomberg says. Meanwhile, Microsoft Corp., a large investor in OpenAI, already has an established relationship with the US military through various software contracts.

OpenAI opens the door for military uses but maintains AI weapons ban Read More »

regulators-aren’t-convinced-that-microsoft-and-openai-operate-independently

Regulators aren’t convinced that Microsoft and OpenAI operate independently

AI, anticompetitive behavior, Antitrust law, competition, competition and markets authority, European Commission, generative ai, microsoft, monopoly, openai, Policy, virtual worlds / /

Under Microsoft’s thumb? —

EU is fielding comments on potential market harms of Microsoft’s investments.

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Regulators aren’t convinced that Microsoft and OpenAI operate independently

European Union regulators are concerned that Microsoft may be covertly controlling OpenAI as its biggest investor.

On Tuesday, the European Commission (EC) announced that it is currently “checking whether Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI might be reviewable under the EU Merger Regulation.”

The EC’s executive vice president in charge of competition policy, Margrethe Vestager, said in the announcement that rapidly advancing AI technologies are “disruptive” and have “great potential,” but to protect EU markets, a forward-looking analysis scrutinizing antitrust risks has become necessary.

Hoping to thwart predictable anticompetitive risks, the EC has called for public comments. Regulators are particularly keen to hear from policy experts, academics, and industry and consumer organizations who can identify “potential competition issues” stemming from tech companies partnering to develop generative AI and virtual world/metaverse systems.

The EC worries that partnerships like Microsoft and OpenAI could “result in entrenched market positions and potential harmful competition behavior that is difficult to address afterwards.” That’s why Vestager said that these partnerships needed to be “closely” monitored now—”to ensure they do not unduly distort market dynamics.”

Microsoft has denied having control over OpenAI.

A Microsoft spokesperson told Ars that, rather than stifling competition, since 2019, the tech giant has “forged a partnership with OpenAI that has fostered more AI innovation and competition, while preserving independence for both companies.”

But ever since Sam Altman was bizarrely ousted by OpenAI’s board, then quickly reappointed as OpenAI’s CEO—joining Microsoft for the brief time in between—regulators have begun questioning whether recent governance changes mean that Microsoft’s got more control over OpenAI than the companies have publicly stated.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to Ars’ request to comment. Last year, OpenAI confirmed that “it remained independent and operates competitively,” CNBC reported.

Beyond the EU, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) and reportedly the US Federal Trade Commission have also launched investigations into Microsoft’s OpenAI investments. On January 3, the CMA ended its comments period, but it’s currently unclear whether significant competition issues were raised that could trigger a full-fledged CMA probe.

A CMA spokesperson declined Ars’ request to comment on the substance of comments received or to verify how many comments were received.

Antitrust legal experts told Reuters that authorities should act quickly to prevent “critical emerging technology” like generative AI from being “monopolized,” noting that before launching a probe, the CMA will need to find evidence showing that Microsoft’s influence over OpenAI materially changed after Altman’s reappointment.

The EC is also investigating partnerships beyond Microsoft and OpenAI, questioning whether agreements “between large digital market players and generative AI developers and providers” may impact EU market dynamics.

Microsoft observing OpenAI board meetings

In total, Microsoft has pumped $13 billion into OpenAI, CNBC reported, which has a somewhat opaque corporate structure. OpenAI’s parent company, Reuters reported in December, is a nonprofit, which is “a type of entity rarely subject to antitrust scrutiny.” But in 2019, as Microsoft started investing billions into the AI company, OpenAI also “set up a for-profit subsidiary, in which Microsoft owns a 49 percent stake,” an insider source told Reuters. On Tuesday, a nonprofit consumer rights group, the Public Citizen, called for California Attorney General Robert Bonta to “investigate whether OpenAI should retain its non-profit status.”

A Microsoft spokesperson told Reuters that the source’s information was inaccurate, reiterating that the terms of Microsoft’s agreement with OpenAI are confidential. Microsoft has maintained that while it is entitled to OpenAI’s profits, it does not own “any portion” of OpenAI.

After OpenAI’s drama with Altman ended with an overhaul of OpenAI’s board, Microsoft appeared to increase its involvement with OpenAI by receiving a non-voting observer role on the board. That’s what likely triggered lawmaker’s initial concerns that Microsoft “may be exerting control over OpenAI,” CNBC reported.

The EC’s announcement comes days after Microsoft confirmed that Dee Templeton would serve as the observer on OpenAI’s board, initially reported by Bloomberg.

Templeton has spent 25 years working for Microsoft and is currently vice president for technology and research partnerships and operations. According to Bloomberg, she has already attended OpenAI board meetings.

Microsoft’s spokesperson told Ars that adding a board observer was the only recent change in the company’s involvement in OpenAI. An OpenAI spokesperson told CNBC that Microsoft’s board observer has no “governing authority or control over OpenAI’s operations.”

By appointing Templeton as a board observer, Microsoft may simply be seeking to avoid any further surprises that could affect its investment in OpenAI, but the CMA has suggested that Microsoft’s involvement in the board may have created “a relevant merger situation” that could shake up competition in the UK if not appropriately regulated.

Regulators aren’t convinced that Microsoft and OpenAI operate independently Read More »

ai-firms’-pledges-to-defend-customers-from-ip-issues-have-real-limits

AI firms’ pledges to defend customers from IP issues have real limits

AI, Amazon, copyright, Google, indemnity, microsoft, syndication / /

Read the fine print —

Indemnities offered by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are narrow.

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The Big Tech groups are competing to offer new services such as virtual assistants and chatbots as part of a multibillion-dollar bet on generative AI

Enlarge / The Big Tech groups are competing to offer new services such as virtual assistants and chatbots as part of a multibillion-dollar bet on generative AI

FT

The world’s biggest cloud computing companies that have pushed new artificial intelligence tools to their business customers are offering only limited protections against potential copyright lawsuits over the technology.

Amazon, Microsoft and Google are competing to offer new services such as virtual assistants and chatbots as part of a multibillion-dollar bet on generative AI—systems that can spew out humanlike text, images and code in seconds.

AI models are “trained” on data, such as photographs and text found on the internet. This has led to concern that rights holders, from media companies to image libraries, will make legal claims against third parties who use the AI tools trained on their copyrighted data.

The big three cloud computing providers have pledged to defend business customers from such intellectual property claims. But an analysis of the indemnity clauses published by the cloud computing companies show that the legal protections only extend to the use of models developed by or with oversight from Google, Amazon and Microsoft.

“The indemnities are quite a smart bit of business . . . and make people think ‘I can use this without worrying’,” said Matthew Sag, professor of law at Emory University.

But Brenda Leong, a partner at Luminos Law, said it was “important for companies to understand that [the indemnities] are very narrowly focused and defined.”

Google, Amazon and Microsoft declined to comment.

The indemnities provided to customers do not cover use of third-party models, such as those developed by AI start-up Anthropic, which counts Amazon and Google as investors, even if these tools are available for use on the cloud companies’ platforms.

In the case of Amazon, only content produced by its own models, such as Titan, as well as a range of the company’s AI applications, are covered.

Similarly, Microsoft only provides protection for the use of tools that run on its in-house models and those developed by OpenAI, the startup with which it has a multibillion-dollar alliance.

“People needed those assurances to buy, because they were hyper aware of [the legal] risk,” said one IP lawyer working on the issues.

The three cloud providers, meanwhile, have been adding safety filters to their tools that aim to screen out any potentially problematic content that is generated. The tech groups had become “more satisfied that instances of infringements would be very low,” but did not want to provide “unbounded” protection, the lawyer said.

While the indemnification policies announced by Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet are similar, their customers may want to negotiate more specific indemnities in contracts tailored to their needs, though that is not yet common practice, people close to the cloud companies said.

OpenAI and Meta are among the companies fighting the first generative AI test cases brought by prominent authors and the comedian Sarah Silverman. They have focused in large part on allegations that the companies developing models unlawfully used copyrighted content to train them.

Indemnities were being offered as an added layer of “security” to users who might be worried about the prospect of more lawsuits, especially since the test cases could “take significant time to resolve,” which created a period of “uncertainty,” said Angela Dunning, a partner at law firm Cleary Gottlieb.

However, Google’s indemnity does not extend to models that have been “fine-tuned” by customers using their internal company data—a practice that allows businesses to train general models to produce more relevant and specific results—while Microsoft’s does.

Amazon’s covers Titan models that have been customized in this way, but if the alleged infringement is due to the fine-tuning, the protection is voided.

Legal claims brought against the users—rather than the makers—of generative AI tools may be challenging to win, however.

When dismissing part of a claim brought by three artists a year ago against AI companies Stability AI, DeviantArt, and Midjourney, US Judge William Orrick said one “problem” was that it was “not plausible” that every image generated by the tools had relied on “copyrighted training images.”

For copyright infringement to apply, the AI-generated images must be shown to be “substantially similar” to the copyrighted images, Orrick said.

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

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discontinued-and-unreleased-microsoft-peripherals-revived-by-licensing-deal

Discontinued and unreleased Microsoft peripherals revived by licensing deal

Keyboards, Mice, microsoft, Tech / /

Sorry, no Intellimouse —

Classics like the Ergonomic Keyboard should be available again this year.

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Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard

Enlarge / The Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard is making a comeback.

Microsoft

In April, Microsoft announced that it would stop selling Microsoft-branded computer peripherals. Today, Onward Brands announced that it’s giving those discarded Microsoft-stamped gadgets a second life under new branding. Products like the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard will become Incase products with “Designed by Microsoft” branding.

Beyond the computer accessories saying “Designed by Microsoft,” they should be the same keyboards, mice, webcams, headsets, and speakers, Onward, Incase’s parent company, said, per The Verge. Onward said its Incase brand will bring back 23 Microsoft-designed products in 2024 and hopes for availability to start in Q2.

Some of the Microsoft-designed gear that Incase is relaunching.

Enlarge / Some of the Microsoft-designed gear that Incase is relaunching.

Incase also plans to launch an ergonomic keyboard that Microsoft designed but never released. Onward CEO Charlie Tebele told The Verge that there’s “potential” for Incase to release even more designs Microsoft never let us see.

Licensing deal

The return of Microsoft peripheral designs resurrects (albeit in a new form) a line of computer gear started in 1983 when Microsoft released its first mouse, the Microsoft Mouse.

Neither Onward nor Microsoft shared the full terms of their licensing agreement, but Onward claims that Incase will leverage the same supply chain and manufacturing components that Microsoft did, The Verge noted.

“Microsoft will still retain ownership of its designs, so it could potentially bring back classic mice or keyboards itself in the future or continue to renew its license to Incase,” The Verge reported, pointing out that Onward isn’t licensing every single one of Microsoft’s computer peripherals. Some classics, like the Intellimouse or its modern iterations, for example, don’t make the Incase reboot list.

For its part, Microsoft is still “convicted on going under one single” Surface brand, Nancie Gaskill, general manager of Surface, told The Verge.

That said, in Microsoft’s old designs, Incase, whose website is currently filled with backpacks, bags, and laptop and AirPod cases, suddenly finds itself selling keyboards, mice, and other peripherals. Onward’s other brands, Griffin, Incipio, and Survivor, also don’t sell the types of products that Incase is licensing here. If all goes well, Incase could build its own computer accessories portfolio.

Microsoft’s initial departure from Microsoft-brand peripherals meant it would only focus on more expensive, higher-end designs worthy of Surface branding. But that left a gap for the numerous users who felt satisfied with Microsoft’s various designs that were simpler and more affordable. Incase’s venture could help serve those customers, while Microsoft’s legacy with such products can continue without major investment from the tech giant.

Here’s a full list of the Microsoft-designed peripherals that Incase plans to bring back in 2024:

Keyboards

  • Bluetooth Keyboard
  • Bluetooth Number Pad
  • Designer Compact Keyboard
  • Ergonomic Keyboard
  • Sculpt Comfort Desktop
  • Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop
  • Sculpt Ergonomic Keyboard
  • Wired Desktop 600
  • Wired Keyboard 600
  • Wireless Comfort Desktop 5050 AES
  • Wireless Desktop 850
  • Wireless Desktop 900

Mice

  • Bluetooth Ergonomic Mouse
  • Bluetooth Mouse
  • Mobile Mouse 1850
  • Modern Mobile Mouse
  • Sculpt Ergonomic Mouse

Audio

  • Audio Dock
  • Modern USB Headset
  • Modern USB-C Headset
  • Modern USB-C Speaker
  • Modern Webcam
  • Modern Wireless Headset

Discontinued and unreleased Microsoft peripherals revived by licensing deal Read More »

microsoft-is-adding-a-new-key-to-pc-keyboards-for-the-first-time-since-1994

Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994

copilot, microsoft, openai, Tech, Windows 10, Windows 11 / /

key change —

Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards, though not yet.

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A rendering of Microsoft's Copilot key, as seen on a Surface-esque laptop keyboard.

Enlarge / A rendering of Microsoft’s Copilot key, as seen on a Surface-esque laptop keyboard.

Microsoft

Microsoft pushed throughout 2023 to add generative AI capabilities to its software, even extending its new Copilot AI assistant to Windows 10 late last year. Now, those efforts to transform PCs at a software level is extending to the hardware: Microsoft is adding a dedicated Copilot key to PC keyboards, adjusting the standard Windows keyboard layout for the first time since the Windows key first appeared on its Natural Keyboard in 1994.

The Copilot key will, predictably, open up the Copilot generative AI assistant within Windows 10 and Windows 11. On an up-to-date Windows PC with Copilot enabled, you can currently do the same thing by pressing Windows + C. For PCs without Copilot enabled, including those that aren’t signed into Microsoft accounts, the Copilot key will open Windows Search instead (though this is sort of redundant, since pressing the Windows key and then typing directly into the Start menu also activates the Search function).

A quick Microsoft demo video shows the Copilot key in between the cluster of arrow keys and the right Alt button, a place where many keyboards usually put a menu button, a right Ctrl key, another Windows key, or something similar. The exact positioning, and the key being replaced, may vary depending on the size and layout of the keyboard.

We asked Microsoft if a Copilot key would be required on OEM PCs going forward; the company told us that the key isn’t mandatory now, but that it expects Copilot keys to be required on Windows 11 keyboards “over time.” Microsoft often imposes some additional hardware requirements on major PC makers that sell Windows on their devices, beyond what is strictly necessary to run Windows itself.

If nothing else, this new key is a sign of how much Microsoft wants people to use Copilot and its other generative AI products. Plenty of past company initiatives—Bing, Edge, Cortana, and the Microsoft Store, to name a few—never managed to become baked into the hardware like this. In the Windows 8 epoch, Microsoft required OEMs to build a Windows button into the display bezel of devices with touchscreens, but that requirement eventually disappeared. If Copilot fizzles or is deemphasized the way Cortana was, the Copilot key could become a way to quickly date a Windows PC from the mid-2020s, the way that changes to the Windows logo date keyboards from earlier eras.

We’ll definitely see more AI features from Microsoft this year, too—Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Medhi called 2024 “the year of the AI PC” in today’s announcement.

Chipmakers like Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm are all building neural processing units (NPUs) into their latest silicon, and we’ll likely see more updates for Windows apps and features that can take advantage of this new on-device processing capability. Rumors also indicate that we could see a “Windows 12” release as soon as this year; while Windows 11 has mostly had AI features stacked on top of it, a new OS could launch with AI features more deeply integrated into the UI and apps, as well as additional hardware requirements for some features.

Microsoft says the Copilot key will debut in some PCs that will be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show this month. Surface devices with the revised keyboard layout are “upcoming.”

Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994 Read More »

the-oldest-known-version-of-ms-dos’s-predecessor-has-been-discovered-and-uploaded

The oldest-known version of MS-DOS’s predecessor has been discovered and uploaded

86-dos, IBM PC, microsoft, MS-DOS, pc-dos, retrocomputing, Tech / /

a new doscovery —

86-DOS would later be bought by Microsoft and take over the computing world.

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The IBM PC 5150.

Enlarge / The IBM PC 5150.

SSPL/Getty Images

Microsoft’s MS-DOS (and its IBM-branded counterpart, PC DOS) eventually became software juggernauts, powering the vast majority of PCs throughout the ’80s and serving as the underpinnings of Windows throughout the ’90s.

But the software had humble beginnings, as we’ve detailed in our history of the IBM PC and elsewhere. It began in mid-1980 as QDOS, or “Quick and Dirty Operating System,” the work of developer Tim Paterson at a company called Seattle Computer Products (SCP). It was later renamed 86-DOS, after the Intel 8086 processor, and this was the version that Microsoft licensed and eventually purchased.

Last week, Internet Archive user f15sim discovered and uploaded a new-old version of 86-DOS to the Internet Archive. Version 0.1-C of 86-DOS is available for download here and can be run using the SIMH emulator; before this, the earliest extant version of 86-DOS was version 0.34, also uploaded by f15sim.

This version of 86-DOS is rudimentary even by the standards of early-’80s-era DOS builds and includes just a handful of utilities, a text-based chess game, and documentation for said chess game. But as early as it is, it remains essentially recognizable as the DOS that would go on to take over the entire PC business. If you’re just interested in screenshots, some have been posted by user NTDEV on the site that used to be Twitter.

According to the version history available on Wikipedia, this build of 86-DOS would date back to roughly August of 1980, shortly after it lost the “QDOS” moniker. By late 1980, SCP was sharing version 0.3x of the software with Microsoft, and by early 1981, it was being developed as the primary operating system of the then-secret IBM Personal Computer. By the middle of 1981, roughly a year after 86-DOS began life as QDOS, Microsoft had purchased the software outright and renamed it MS-DOS.

Microsoft and IBM continued to co-develop MS-DOS for many years; the version IBM licensed and sold on its PCs was called PC DOS, though for most of their history the two products were identical. Microsoft also retained the ability to license the software to other computer manufacturers as MS-DOS, which contributed to the rise of a market of mostly interoperable PC clones. The PC market as we know it today still more or less resembles the PC-compatible market of the mid-to-late 1980s, albeit with dramatically faster and more capable components.

The oldest-known version of MS-DOS’s predecessor has been discovered and uploaded Read More »

ny-times-copyright-suit-wants-openai-to-delete-all-gpt-instances

NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances

AI, copyright, infringement, lawsuit, LLMs, microsoft, ny times, openai, Policy / /

Not the sincerest form of flattery —

Shows evidence that GPT-based systems will reproduce Times articles if asked.

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Image of a CPU on a motherboard with

Enlarge / Microsoft is named in the suit for allegedly building the system that allowed GPT derivatives to be trained using infringing material.

In August, word leaked out that The New York Times was considering joining the growing legion of creators that are suing AI companies for misappropriating their content. The Times had reportedly been negotiating with OpenAI regarding the potential to license its material, but those talks had not gone smoothly. So, eight months after the company was reportedly considering suing, the suit has now been filed.

The Times is targeting various companies under the OpenAI umbrella, as well as Microsoft, an OpenAI partner that both uses it to power its Copilot service and helped provide the infrastructure for training the GPT Large Language Model. But the suit goes well beyond the use of copyrighted material in training, alleging that OpenAI-powered software will happily circumvent the Times’ paywall and ascribe hallucinated misinformation to the Times.

Journalism is expensive

The suit notes that The Times maintains a large staff that allows it to do things like dedicate reporters to a huge range of beats and engage in important investigative journalism, among other things. Because of those investments, the newspaper is often considered an authoritative source on many matters.

All of that costs money, and The Times earns that by limiting access to its reporting through a robust paywall. In addition, each print edition has a copyright notification, the Times’ terms of service limit the copying and use of any published material, and it can be selective about how it licenses its stories. In addition to driving revenue, these restrictions also help it to maintain its reputation as an authoritative voice by controlling how its works appear.

The suit alleges that OpenAI-developed tools undermine all of that. “By providing Times content without The Times’s permission or authorization, Defendants’ tools undermine and damage The Times’s relationship with its readers and deprive The Times of subscription, licensing, advertising, and affiliate revenue,” the suit alleges.

Part of the unauthorized use The Times alleges came during the training of various versions of GPT. Prior to GPT-3.5, information about the training dataset was made public. One of the sources used is a large collection of online material called “Common Crawl,” which the suit alleges contains information from 16 million unique records from sites published by The Times. That places the Times as the third most referenced source, behind Wikipedia and a database of US patents.

OpenAI no longer discloses as many details of the data used for training of recent GPT versions, but all indications are that full-text NY Times articles are still part of that process (Much more on that in a moment.) Expect access to training information to be a major issue during discovery if this case moves forward.

Not just training

A number of suits have been filed regarding the use of copyrighted material during training of AI systems. But the Times’ suit goes well beyond that to show how the material ingested during training can come back out during use. “Defendants’ GenAI tools can generate output that recites Times content verbatim, closely summarizes it, and mimics its expressive style, as demonstrated by scores of examples,” the suit alleges.

The suit alleges—and we were able to verify—that it’s comically easy to get GPT-powered systems to offer up content that is normally protected by the Times’ paywall. The suit shows a number of examples of GPT-4 reproducing large sections of articles nearly verbatim.

The suit includes screenshots of ChatGPT being given the title of a piece at The New York Times and asked for the first paragraph, which it delivers. Getting the ensuing text is apparently as simple as repeatedly asking for the next paragraph.

ChatGPT has apparently closed that loophole in between the preparation of that suit and the present. We entered some of the prompts shown in the suit, and were advised “I recommend checking The New York Times website or other reputable sources,” although we can’t rule out that context provided prior to that prompt could produce copyrighted material.

Ask for a paragraph, and Copilot will hand you a wall of normally paywalled text.

Ask for a paragraph, and Copilot will hand you a wall of normally paywalled text.

John Timmer

But not all loopholes have been closed. The suit also shows output from Bing Chat, since rebranded as Copilot. We were able to verify that asking for the first paragraph of a specific article at The Times caused Copilot to reproduce the first third of the article.

The suit is dismissive of attempts to justify this as a form of fair use. “Publicly, Defendants insist that their conduct is protected as ‘fair use’ because their unlicensed use of copyrighted content to train GenAI models serves a new ‘transformative’ purpose,” the suit notes. “But there is nothing ‘transformative’ about using The Times’s content without payment to create products that substitute for The Times and steal audiences away from it.”

Reputational and other damages

The hallucinations common to AI also came under fire in the suit for potentially damaging the value of the Times’ reputation, and possibly damaging human health as a side effect. “A GPT model completely fabricated that “The New York Times published an article on January 10, 2020, titled ‘Study Finds Possible Link between Orange Juice and Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma,’” the suit alleges. “The Times never published such an article.”

Similarly, asking about a Times article on heart-healthy foods allegedly resulted in Copilot saying it contained a list of examples (which it didn’t). When asked for the list, 80 percent of the foods on weren’t even mentioned by the original article. In another case, recommendations were ascribed to the Wirecutter when the products hadn’t even been reviewed by its staff.

As with the Times material, it’s alleged that it’s possible to get Copilot to offer up large chunks of Wirecutter articles (The Wirecutter is owned by The New York Times). But the suit notes that these article excerpts have the affiliate links stripped out of them, keeping the Wirecutter from its primary source of revenue.

The suit targets various OpenAI companies for developing the software, as well as Microsoft—the latter for both offering OpenAI-powered services, and for having developed the computing systems that enabled the copyrighted material to be ingested during training. Allegations include direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement, as well as DMCA and trademark violations. Finally, it alleges “Common Law Unfair Competition By Misappropriation.”

The suit seeks nothing less than the erasure of both any GPT instances that the parties have trained using material from the Times, as well as the destruction of the datasets that were used for the training. It also asks for a permanent injunction to prevent similar conduct in the future. The Times also wants money, lots and lots of money: “statutory damages, compensatory damages, restitution, disgorgement, and any other relief that may be permitted by law or equity.”

NY Times copyright suit wants OpenAI to delete all GPT instances Read More »