{"id":106567,"date":"2025-05-16T15:09:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-16T15:09:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/106567\/"},"modified":"2025-05-16T15:09:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T15:09:08","slug":"microsoft-says-its-azure-and-ai-tech-hasnt-harmed-people-in-gaza","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/106567\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft\u00a0says its Azure and AI tech\u00a0hasn\u2019t\u00a0harmed people in Gaza"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft says it has found no evidence that the Israeli military has used its Azure and AI technology to harm Palestinian civilians or anyone else in Gaza. The software maker says<\/a> it has \u201cconducted an internal review and engaged an external firm,\u201d to perform a review, after some Microsoft employees have repeatedly called on the company to cut its contracts with the Israeli government.<\/p>\n

Microsoft says that its relationship with the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) is \u201cstructured as a standard commercial relationship,\u201d and that it has \u201cfound no evidence that Microsoft\u2019s Azure and AI technologies, or any of our other software, have been used to harm people or that IMOD has failed to comply with our terms of service or our AI Code of Conduct.\u201d Microsoft\u2019s AI code of conduct<\/a> requires that customers use human oversight and access controls to ensure cloud and AI services don\u2019t inflict harm \u201cin any way that is prohibited by law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The review process included \u201cinterviewing dozens of employees and assessing documents,\u201d looking for evidence that Microsoft technologies were being used to target or harm anyone in Gaza. However, the company notes that it \u201cdoes not have visibility into how customers use our software on their own servers or other devices,\u201d so the evidence to inform its review is clearly very limited in scope.<\/p>\n

The review comes just weeks after two former Microsoft employees disrupted the company\u2019s 50th-anniversary event, with one calling Microsoft\u2019s AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, a \u201cwar profiteer\u201d and demanding<\/a> that Microsoft \u201cstop using AI for genocide in our region.\u201d A second protester interrupted Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates<\/a>, former CEO Steve Ballmer, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella later on in the event.<\/p>\n

Both former Microsoft employees also sent separate emails to thousands of coworkers, protesting the company providing software, cloud services, and consulting services to the Israeli military. The first protester, Ibtihal Aboussad, was fired<\/a>, and the second, Vaniya Agrawal, was dismissed shortly after putting in her two weeks\u2019 notice. Both are associated with No Azure for Apartheid<\/a>, a group of current and former Microsoft employees rallying against Microsoft\u2019s contracts with Israel.<\/p>\n

The group accuses Microsoft of \u201csupporting and enabling an apartheid state,\u201c by not suspending sales of cloud and AI services to Israel, like it did to Russia<\/a> when it invaded Ukraine. It has also highlighted reports from The Guardian<\/a> and the Associated Press<\/a>, based on leaked documents, that detail the Israeli military\u2019s increased use of Azure and OpenAI technology to gather information through mass surveillance and use AI tools to transcribe and translate phone calls, texts, and audio messages. Microsoft also reportedly supplied 19,000 hours of engineering support and consultancy services to the Israeli military, in a deal that\u2019s said to be valued at around $10 million.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is worth noting that militaries typically use their own proprietary software or applications from defense-related providers for the types of surveillance and operations that have been the subject of our employees\u2019 questions,\u201d says Microsoft in its blog post. \u201cMicrosoft has not created or provided such software or solutions to the IMOD.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hossam Nasr, an organizer of No Azure for Apartheid, has taken issue with Microsoft\u2019s statement, saying it\u2019s \u201cfilled with both lies and contradictions\u201d in an interview with GeekWire<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no form of selling technology to an army that is plausibly accused of genocide \u2014 whose leaders are wanted for war crimes and crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court \u2014 that would be ethical,\u201d says Nasr. \u201cThat\u2019s the premise that we reject.\u201d Nasr also highlighted that Microsoft\u2019s statement mentions Israel multiple times, but \u201cnot once did they name Palestinians or Palestinian people or Palestine\u201d in the blog post. \u201cI think that still speaks to where Microsoft\u2019s business interests truly lie.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Microsoft says it has found no evidence that the Israeli military has used its Azure and AI technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":106568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3163],"tags":[323,1942,507,12,326,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-106567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-microsoft","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-tech","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114518148191856701","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}