Microsoft bans US police from using Azure OpenAI Service for facial recognition
Microsoft has banned US police departments from using Azure OpenAI Service for facial recognition, TechCrunch reports.
The company has added a clause to the Azure OpenAI Service terms of use that explicitly prohibits integration with the Azure OpenAI Service for facial recognition by US police departments.
The policy change comes a week after Axon, a manufacturer of technology and weapons for military and law enforcement, announced a new product that uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 generative text model to summarize audio from police body cameras.
It’s unclear whether Axon was using GPT-4 through the Azure OpenAI Service, and if so, whether the updated policy was in response to the launch of Axon’s product. Previously, OpenAI limited the use of its models for face recognition through its APIs.
The complete ban on the use of the Azure OpenAI Service applies only to the US police. For the rest of the world, the ban does not apply to face recognition using stationary cameras in a controlled environment.
