WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – Microsoft has acknowledged that it sold advanced artificial intelligence and cloud computing services to the Zionist regime’s military during the war in Gaza, but stopped short of admitting that the company’s Azure platform and AI technologies were used to target or harm people in Gaza.
The unsigned blog post on Microsoft’s corporate website appears to be the company’s first public acknowledgement of its deep involvement in the war, which started in October 2023.
It comes nearly three months after an investigation by The Associated Press revealed previously unreported details about the American tech giant’s close partnership with the Zionist regime’s war ministry, with military use of commercial AI products skyrocketing by nearly 200 times after Oct. 7, 2023. The AP reported that the Israeli military uses Azure to transcribe, translate and process intelligence gathered through mass surveillance, which can then be cross-checked with the occupying regime’s in-house AI-enabled targeting systems and vice versa.
The partnership reflects a growing drive by tech companies to sell their artificial intelligence products to militaries for a wide range of uses, including in the occupied territories, Ukraine and the United States. However, human rights groups have raised concerns that AI systems, which can be flawed and prone to errors, are being used to help make decisions about who or what to target, resulting in the deaths of innocent people.
Microsoft said Thursday that employee concerns and media reports had prompted the company to launch an internal review and hire an external firm to undertake “additional fact-finding.” The statement did not identify the outside firm or provide a copy of its report.
The statement also did not directly address several questions about precisely how the Israeli military is using its technologies, and the company declined Friday to comment further. Microsoft declined to answer written questions from The AP about how its AI models helped translate, sort and analyze intelligence used by the military to select targets for airstrikes.