Mustafa Suleyman, CEO and co-founder of Inflection AI, speaks at the Axios BFD event in New York, United States, October 12, 2023.
Brendan McDermid | Reuters
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman said the software giant would not build artificial intelligence services that provide “erotic simulation,” distancing itself from longtime partner OpenAI.
“It’s just not a service that we’re going to provide,” Suleyman said Thursday at the Paley International Council summit in Menlo Park, California. “Other companies will build this.”
Suleyman’s comments come a week after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said his company planned to allow verified adults to use ChatGPT for erotic purposes. Altman said OpenAI is “not the world’s elected moral police.”
Microsoft has been a major investor and cloud partner in OpenAI for years, and both companies have used their respective strengths to build large AI companies. But the relationship has shown signs of strain lately, with OpenAI partnering with Microsoft competitors like Google And Oracleand Microsoft is focusing more on its own AI services.
Earlier Thursday, Microsoft announcement a series of new features for its Copilot AI chatbot, including an AI companion called Mico that can respond to users via a call function and express itself by changing its color.
Suleyman wrote in August a essay titled “We need to build AI for people, not to be a person.” He argued that tech companies should not create “seemingly conscious” services that could make humans feel like they might be capable of suffering, and wrote that conscious AIs could create another “axis of division” for humanity.
On Thursday, Suleyman said the creation of seemingly conscious AI was already underway, primarily with erotica-focused services. He referenced Altman’s comments as well as Elon Musk’s Grok, who in July spear its own companion features, including a female anime character.
“You can already see it with some of these avatars and people moving toward the sexbot kind of erotica,” Suleyman said. “It’s very dangerous and I think we should make conscious decisions to avoid these kinds of things.”
OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment, while xAI responded saying: “Legacy Media Lies.”
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