Microsoft Archives

Weekend roundup; Altman on bubbles, LinkedIn trains on content and more

Investors are starting to worry about overextension in the AI market after a week of strong spending. — Bubble or not, OpenAI grows faster than any company in history — and they need more compute. (Picture: Adobe)

Altman on bubble-talk: «I totally get that»
After a week of announcements and deals totaling somewhere in the ballpark of some $850 billion — or almost half of the expected AI infrastructure spending in the coming years, MSNBC asked him if this might be overkill and wether the market was getting overheated. Said Altman «I totally get that. I think that’s a very natural thing» he added that «This is what it takes to deliver AI,» and that «We are growing faster than any business I’ve ever heard of before»
Read the full story at MSNBC.

Your LinkedIn data will be used for training
LinkedIn says it will start training Microsoft’s AI on profiles, posts, resumes and public activities on the site from November 3, 2025 — and it’s enabled by default. There is an opt-out option, but that only works on future content after you click it, and everything written before that will be used. It affects all users, including in the EU, the EEA, in Switzerland, Canada, Hong Kong, the UK, and also in the USA. Here’s a helpful page on the consequences and how to fight it.
More at TechRadar and Proton.me.

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Weekend roundup; Chrome gets Gemini, Microsoft goes Claude and Veo comes to Youtube

Google is letting Gemini loose on the world's most popular browser. — While others are still struggling with the AI-based browser, Google is going all-in with Chrome. (Picture: Google)

Google goes nuclear; brings Gemini to Chrome
While OpenAI is still working on a browser and others are cautious or have failed to take off, Google is done waiting. They are now building the Gemini assistant directly into the world’s most popular browser. «Gemini with Chrome» will navigate and summarize your tabs for you, offer helpful suggestions in the URL bar, and should soon help you order stuff online. It can even find your closed tabs and search for references inside Youtube videos. It’s rolling out to Mac and Windows users with language set to English as of this writing. They call it «a new era of browsing.»
More at Google’s launch page, Google’s overview and launch thread.

Hands-on with Meta’s new Ray-Bans
Has Meta found the Goldilocks zone of smart glasses? Their recently launched Ray-Bans with an internal screen seems to have hit the sweet spot with reviewers. The Verge calls them the best smart glasses out there, Tom’s Hardware says it «feels like the future,» and Gizmodo writes that you’re going to want a pair. The consensus seems to be that the in-lens screen is quite useful, just about bright enough and it hits the sweet spot with the new wristband.
More at Mashable’s roundup.

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Friday roundup: OpenAI deals with Microsoft, makes a movie, and Albania gets an AI-generated minister

The first feature length movie made almost entirely by AI is set to debut at next year's Cannes Festival. — Made with «OpenAI resources,» this movie is built from animated uploaded drawings and prompts. (Picture: Screenshot, Critterz)

Microsoft agrees with OpenAI to keep talking
Microsoft is in a complex business relationship with OpenAI, where the early investor gets access to the latest AI tech and OpenAI gets access to computing power. They have just reached a “non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the next phase of our partnership.” This could allow OpenAI to go for-profit, under the control of a non-profit entity said to retain an ownership stake of more than $100 billion. Many takes on this today, but OpenAI has been moving away from Microsoft for funding, operations and cloud computing lately. The final deal will likely include some kind of a new investment in the now $500 billion company, and may unlock further market opportunities for OpenAI.
More at: OpenAI and Microsoft’s joint statement, x.com announcement, Reuters, Axios.

OpenAI goes to the movies
A new animated a-list movie, «Critterz» is under development using «OpenAI’s resources.» It should be ready for the Cannes Film Festival, meaning production time will be drastically sped up to only nine months. The script is written by part of the team from «Paddington in Peru», and it is spearheaded by Chad Nelson, who is a creative specialist at OpenAI. The technique looks to be to feed drawings to a large language model and have it animate them. The movie therefore streamlines animation, but wont skimp on voice actors, Gizmodo writes.
More at: The Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo and Engadget.

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Friday roundup: A good week for coding, speech models

Coding and speech models grab the headlines for this weeks roundup. — Both OpenAI and Microsoft are out with speech-to-speech models this week. (Picture: OpenAI)

OpenAI makes Realtime API generally available
The agentic Realtime model is a native speech-to-speech model that can be used to make customer service agents, phone reps and voice navigation features. It doesn’t go through speech-to-text and text-to-speech loops and generates audio «directly through a single model and API.» OpenAI is marketing this to developers who want more natural flowing speech, and it’s not available as distinct model in ChatGPT – yet. You can hear it and see it in use at places like Zillow, T-mobile, StubHub and Oscar Health, though. With general availability, it will surely show up in a lot more places soon.
More at: OpenAI’s launch page, discussion on r/OpenAI.

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Microsoft Research: These are the jobs most vulnerable to AI disruption

There's a direct comparison between tasks performed by AI and the actual jobs that do them, says Microsoft. — Microsoft produces a big, scary list. (Picture: Adobe)

The company behind the Copilot chatbot has compared the tasks most frequently performed by AI to actual jobs doing the work.

The result might not be all that surprising, as AI is used the most to solve issues in translation, communication and writing — and is least used in areas such as construction and other manual labor.

Data is from 2024
From studying some 200,000 anonymized copilot sessions in the USA during 2024, Microsoft has been able to produce a list of the 40 most vulnerable jobs — and the 40 least affected ones.

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Microsoft launches experimental Copilot Mode for Edge

Copilot mode in Edge feels like they just moved the icon to the address bar. — Edge’s new Copilot Mode doesn’t do much just yet, and isn’t agentic.

It’s still a little rough around the edges, is not agentic and can’t support doing tasks.

The idea of turning on Copilot Mode is to get it involved in your tabs and research, to distill info from web pages and do basic tasks.

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With help from top AI labs, American teachers to get better, free training

AFT, the teacher's union is partnering with Big AI for better training on ethical classroom use. — ChatGPT usage is way up in K-12 schools, and now teachers are getting a leg up in how to use it better. (Picture: Wesley Fryer, CC BY 2.0)

With help and funding from Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic, the American Federation of Teachers hopes to educate 400 000 teachers across the USA in ethical AI use in classrooms.

The program will begin right away with virtual, online training for all 1.8 million members of the union, and in New York City with a «three-day training session, including six hours of AI-focused material that highlighted practical, hands-on ways to marry the emerging technology with established pedagogy.»

Already used by a fourth of students
According to the latest data, from February 2025, 79% of teens said they had heard about ChatGPT, while 26% admitted to using it in schoolwork — and there are a plethora of other tools available.

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AI use to become mandatory at Microsoft division

A bellwether for the industry as a whole? Microsoft division mandates AI use. — Usage of AI will become part of permanence reviews at this Microsoft division. (Picture: Ryan Vaarsi, CC BY 2.0)

The developer tools division head at Microsoft, Julia Liuson, recently sent out a memo to managers bluntly saying that «Using AI is no longer optional.»

— AI is now a fundamental part of how we work, she wrote. — Just like collaboration, data-driven thinking, and effective communication, using AI is no longer optional — it’s core to every role and every level.

Employee evaluations should now include their use of AI tools, she says, and managers are rushing to find a formal metric to measure it.

Internal performance requirements at Microsoft vary from team to team, and this is just one division. But it shows how quickly companies are adopting the technology.

Across all of Microsoft, it is estimated that 30% of all coding is already done by AI.

Go read the full scoop at Business Insider, the discussion on r/Singularity, and check out Tag: Work

Microsoft NLWeb tools offer easy AI search for any website

NLWeb is touted as a revolution, but it's catching on just yet. — NLWeb will turn search queries into chatbots, but uptake is not revolutionary, just yet. (Picture: Microsoft)

According to Microsoft, it’s the biggest thing on the web since HTML, leveraging easy code to include on websites and turning them into an AI chatbot app.

This should let websites easily tune into the revolution of AI search, allowing for natural language processing right from the search bar, says Microsoft.

Natural language process as revolution
This is fourth revolution in computers, says Ramanathan V. Guha, a technical fellow at Microsoft, — being able to communicate with applications, and computers in general, with free-form language, to The Verge.

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Big Tech embraces AI coding, hitting 30% of software

Major big tech businesses are doing substantial amounts of AI coding. — Gemini 2.5 Pro opens even more avenues for coding, says Alphabet. They are taking that to heart. (Picture: Google)

With Satya Nadella’s announcement overnight that Microsoft uses AI to code around 30% of their software, AI coding has come of age. Other Big Tech companies have also reported similar numbers lately.

— I’d say maybe 20%, 30% of the code that is inside of our repos today and some of our projects are probably all written by software, said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella during a conversation at LlamaCon, Meta’s AI developer conference, according to CNBC

Microsoft says they have made progress with Python, and less with C++ projects, but he is still pointing that some projects could be entirely written by AI.

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Microsoft: 81% of SMBs see 2025 as pivotal year for AI at work

Microsoft says AI will upend the workplace, and it will happen sooner than you think. (Picture: Joe McKendry/Microsoft)

People are overworked and under pressure to produce ever more, Microsoft’s new «2025 Work Trend Index» report finds.

Enter AI agents to alleviate the press, they say, and 79 % of leaders concur. Most are now planning to use AI to boost productivity within the next 12 to 18 months.

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— This is impressive research! John Carmack defends Microsoft’s AI Quake

Industry legends are coming in force to support AI tools. (Picture: id Software)

The legendary co-creator of the Doom and Quake games for id Software, came out swinging on Monday in support of AI game tools, citing how the industry has developed from the early days of hand coding hex digits.

The heart of the issue is the release of Microsoft’s Copilot Labs’ release of an AI powered, fully playable tech demo of new Quake II maps this weekend.

It wasn’t made by hand or by coding, but rather built as an ai world you could navigate freely, and the frames are rendered on the fly — at 10 frames per second with a a resolution of 640 x 360.

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Copilot labs show off new, playable Quake II levels

A picture of the AI rendered, playable Quake II. — Miss Quake II? Now you can play new levels generated by AI. (Picture: Screenshot)

Amid Ai fears in the gaming industry, replete with layoffs and questions about artistry in the age of AI, Microsofts Copilot labs has offered a glimpse into what the future of gaming might look like.

They spent only just over a week on training to produce a real time game model of Quake II, says Tom’s Hardware, that now plays a somewhat choppy 10 frames per second or so version of the game — with new, never before seen gameplay, generated on the fly.

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Snart kommer Bing chat til «andre» nettlesere

Bing Chat skal komme til flere nettlesere I fremtiden, etter at de knapt kapret andeler med ekslusivitet til Edge. (Bilde: Microsoft.)

Microsofts skryter av at nettleseren deres, Edge, har vokst i ni sammenhengende kvartaler, godt hjulpet av Bing Chat og ChatGPT, men den har knapt tatt markedsandeler fra konkurrentene, og det har ei heller Bing gjort

For å vokse mer, må Microsofts chatbot nå ut til flere folk, og dermed annonserer de nå at den «snart» kommer til andre nettlesere enn deres egen.

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Ny avtale: Nå skal AI-innhold identifiseres, vannmerkes

AI-bransjen har blitt enige med den amerikanske presidenten om en rekke frivillige tiltak for å bedre sikkerheten, sikre forskning på prioriterte felt, og ikke minst om å flagge innhold skapt av kunstig intelligens.

I følge dokumentet som ble publisert i går kveld, skal AI-selskapene Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, og ChatGPT-eier OpenAI, blant annet ha blitt enige om uavhengig testing av generativ AI før de slippes på markedet, og nye investeringer i sikkerhet.

De ble også enige om å «utvikle robuste tekniske mekanismer for å sikre at brukerne vet når innhold er AI-generert,» som et vannmerkesystem.

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