privacy ethics

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency more than tripled the volume of data it held on Microsoft’s Azure cloud in the six months from July 2025 to January 2026 — rising from roughly 400 terabytes to about 1,400 terabytes — while also expanding its use of Azure’s AI-powered...

The University of Georgia has launched a campus AI pilot program for students, marking the latest chapter in a nationwide push by colleges to move beyond blanket bans and toward guided, institution‑level adoption of generative AI tools — a shift that promises productivity and new learning...

OpenAI’s decision to put advertisements into ChatGPT conversations for free and lower-cost users has ripped open a fault line across the AI industry — and the effects will be felt by users, brands, regulators and the very architecture of the web itself. Background The era when conversation with...

The arrival of clearly labeled, visually separated advertisements inside conversational AI marks the end of an era where chatbots were purely informational tools — and the start of a new, risk‑heavy commercial ecosystem for users, brands, and publishers alike...

OpenAI’s announcement that it will begin testing advertisements inside ChatGPT marks a clear turning point for conversational AI: the free and lower‑cost “Go” tiers will start seeing clearly labeled, separated ads beneath answers for logged‑in adults in the U.S., while higher‑paid plans remain...

OpenAI’s move to introduce advertising inside ChatGPT marks a decisive shift in the commercial roadmap for conversational AI — a shift that turns assistants from neutral research tools into potential ad surfaces where brands can buy visibility at the exact moments users express purchase intent...

The year’s tally is a long list of bruises: closed studios, canceled games, tens of thousands of jobs cut, a privacy‑shredding AI rollout that never should have left the slide deck, and a public ethics drama that ended with protesters escorted out of a company anniversary and key cloud contracts...

Microsoft’s Copilot is testing a new, quietly surfaced portrait experiment that would let users “talk to a version of themselves from the future” by generating a personalised avatar from a single front‑camera photo and opening a chat with that rendered likeness — a leak that points to a larger...

Microsoft has quietly added a formal, anonymous channel inside its employee Integrity Portal called Trusted Technology Review, a procedural change meant to give more direct lines for staff to raise ethical, legal, or human‑rights concerns about how Microsoft products and contracts are developed...

Microsoft’s latest push to make Windows 11 feel less like an operating system and more like a conversational partner landed with a carefully timed tease — “Your hands are about to get some PTO. Time to rest those fingers…” — and a follow-up roll‑out that stitches voice, vision, on‑device...

OpenAI’s recent chapter reads like a high‑budget tech drama: dazzling user numbers and massive funding on one hand, and a bruising product backlash, rising costs, and strategic confusion on the other. A forceful critique circulating online argues that OpenAI is “just another boring, desperate AI...

Microsoft is putting a face — deliberately stylized, tightly guarded, and experiment-first — on Copilot by rolling out a new Copilot Labs feature called Portraits, a real‑time animated portrait system that lip‑syncs, nods, and emotes during voice conversations and is currently available only to...

Microsoft’s partial disablement of Azure services to a unit inside Israel’s Ministry of Defense has exposed a layered tragedy: independent investigations show a cloud‑backed surveillance pipeline capable of ingesting and indexing vast quantities of Palestinian phone calls, Microsoft’s own review...

A new Principled Technologies (PT) study — circulated as a press release and picked up by partner outlets — argues that adopting a single‑cloud approach for AI on Microsoft Azure can produce concrete benefits in performance, manageability, and cost predictability, while also leaving room for...

Microsoft has begun rolling out Gaming Copilot (Beta) to Windows PCs via the Xbox Game Bar, an in‑overlay AI assistant that promises real‑time, voice‑first help, screenshot‑aware guidance, achievement tracking, and personalized game recommendations — with mobile Xbox app support scheduled for...

Human memory is not a passive archive — it’s a efficiency engine, and a set of new experiments summarized in Psychology Today argues that our brains preferentially encode pairs of people who look like they’re interacting, making these dyads easier to recall later than two people who merely...

Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, told reporters from his office at the Redmond campus that the company will “investigate and get to the truth” after a Guardian-led investigation alleged that Israel’s Unit 8200 had used Microsoft Azure to store and process vast troves of intercepted Palestinian...

Microsoft finds itself at the epicenter of a rapidly escalating controversy after joint investigative reports revealed that its flagship cloud platform, Azure, may have played a critical role in facilitating mass surveillance operations against Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Sources...

The dawn of the AI-powered era has upended the once familiar routines of internet search and web navigation, transforming how billions find, process, and interact with information each day. From conversational assistants fueling hands-free queries to camera-driven search interpreting the world...

AI-driven creativity has long been a cornerstone of the modern digital experience, but Microsoft’s latest announcement elevates the standard yet again. With the unveiling of Bing Video Creator powered by OpenAI’s Sora, Microsoft injects generative AI video capabilities directly into Bing’s...