Microsoft bans US police departments 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 Terms of Use of the Azure OpenAI Service that explicitly prohibits integration with the Azure OpenAI Service for facial recognition by US police departments.
The policy changes come 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 is unclear whether Axon was using GPT-4 through the Azure OpenAI Service, and if so, whether the updated policy was a response to Axon’s product launch. Previously, OpenAI limited the use of its models for face recognition through its APIs.
The complete ban on the use of Azure OpenAI Service applies only to the US police. For the rest of the world, the ban does not apply to face recognition using fixed cameras in a controlled environment.