Microsoft sets limits for future AI models as industry throttles frontier development

Microsoft has posted a provisional code of conduct that would impose restrictions on its artificial intelligence models, days after Anthropic and OpenAI leaders agreed to slow development speed.

The company behind Windows and Office products hopes to be seen as a responsible actor in AI, where it's a prominent cloud supplier.

"We got feedback from people that they wanted to see even more explicit commitment to AI always working in service of people and not trying to replace them," Mustafa Suleyman, who heads up the company's model development, told CNBC in an interview. "We saw a lot of feedback around AI not creating dependence, not being sycophantic, that it was always there to kind of promote human judgment and human autonomy and agency."

Microsoft chose to put out the guidelines now given the recent discourse, although they've been in the works for about five months, said Suleyman.

AI practitioners and members of the public have become more vocal about their worries as the technology becomes increasingly capable. Last week, Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, saying the AI lab and OpenAI "are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."