Microsoft

Coca-Cola has made a $1.1 billion commitment to the Microsoft Cloud and the company’s generative AI capabilities. Coca-Cola will use the Azure OpenAI Service and Copilot for Microsoft 365 in a five-year strategic partnership. The deal comes a day after Cognizant also partnered with Microsoft for generative AI, and just days before Microsoft’s earnings report where AI growth is a big focus for investors.

Speaking of Microsoft hedging bets, it’s been doing that with VR since day one. The original Oculus Rift shipped with an Xbox One gamepad and could stream games from Xbox, while Microsoft simultaneously pursued its HoloLens and Windows Mixed Reality initiatives.

Microsoft recently brought Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Xbox Cloud Gaming to Meta Quest, too, perhaps in preparation for today’s announce.

It’s only been dead and buried for three months, and yet Microsoft has already glommed onto a new “we don’t have to make this ourselves, OEMs will do it for us” VR headset initiative. Last time, it was Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung with tethered headsets; this time, it’s Meta, Asus, and Lenovo with Qualcomm-powered wireless ones.

Microsoft sure knows how to hedge its bets!

The company will offer the same deepfake protection to EU political parties as it did to US politicians. Political campaigns can use Microsoft’s tools to attach Content Credentials, aka watermarks, to media they release to track whether the image or video has been manipulated.

Microsoft’s new AI model, VASA-1, transforms a single still image and an audio clip into an animated video, which is impressive, if not a little creepy.

The benefits – such as enhancing educational equity, improving accessibility for individuals with communication challenges, offering companionship or therapeutic support to those in need, among many others – underscore the importance of our research and other related explorations.

Microsoft says it won’t release a demo, API, or product with VASA-1 “until we are certain that the technology will be used responsibly.”

If it pushes through, the European Commission could look into whether Microsoft’s $13 billion investment into OpenAI restricts competition, Reuters reports. The commission floated the possibility of an investigation in January.

The partnership between the two companies already drew scrutiny from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority and the Federal Trade Commission in the US.

Microsoft has been testing an Xbox Mastercard for more than six months and it’s now opening it up to everyone in the US today. The Xbox Mastercard is a no annual fee credit card issued by Barclays, and purchases made using the card will generate points that can be redeemed on Xbox games and add-ons.

The many Michaels and Mikes at Microsoft woke up to a larger than normal amount of emails this week. “Someone accidentally(?) added every Mike/Michael at Microsoft to a discussion alias,” reveals Bing VP Michael Schechter. Copilot summarized the email thread and it says some of the Michaels are concerned “they might be hunted for sport” 😅.

Microsoft veteran Ralf Groene has retired after 17 years at the company. Groene was responsible for the design of Microsoft’s Surface tablets, and has been a key part of the company’s tablet and PC hardware efforts over the past decade. Groene has retired less than a year after former Surface chief Panos Panay departed for Amazon, and just weeks after Microsoft named a new Windows and Surface chief.

The investment into G42 brings Microsoft’s AI services and chips to the United Arab Emirates. Meanwhile, G42 will run on Azure. Microsoft president Brad Smith will also join G42’s board.

The New York Times reports the Biden administration helped broker the deal. Under the transaction, G42 will agree to remove Chinese technology from its operations.

The Intercept reports that Microsoft gave a presentation to the Department of Defense that explained how it could use OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 and ChatGPT last year. One such use could be for DALL-E to assist in envisioning the battlefield.

The reference to computer vision training suggests artificial images conjured by DALL-E could help Pentagon computers better “see” conditions on the battlefield, a particular boon for finding — and annihilating — targets.

OpenAI softened its stance on military use for its technology this year, so it’s interesting that Microsoft offered up its products to the DOD.

Weeks after hiring Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, the newly formed Microsoft AI division is opening a hub in London. Suleyman was born and raised in the UK, and he’s now looking for “exceptional individuals” to work on AI projects in London. “There is an enormous pool of AI talent and expertise in the UK, and Microsoft AI plans to make a significant, long-term investment in the region as we begin hiring the best AI scientists and engineers into this new AI hub,” says Suleyman.