Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is optimistic about the future of artificial intelligence, as long as tech companies, politicians, law enforcement and society at large can find some common ground on its limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is about global, societal convergence on certain norms,\u201d Nadella said in an interview with \u200b\u200b\u201dNBC Nightly News\u201d anchor Lester Holt. \u201cEspecially when you have law and law enforcement and tech platforms that can come together, I think we can govern a lot more than we give ourselves credit for.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking Friday in New York, Nadella touched on a wide variety of topics related to AI, including his own company\u2019s challenges and the broader issue of AI-generated fake images. When asked about the recent spread of nonconsensual, sexually explicit deepfakes of Taylor Swift, Nadella called the situation \u201calarming and terrible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a lot being done and a lot still yet to be done, he said, to place guardrails around this type of technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have to act,\u201d Nadella said. \u201cAnd quite frankly all of us in the tech platform, irrespective of what your standing on any particular issue is, I think we all benefit when the online world is a safe world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nadella, who became CEO of the tech giant in 2014 and its chairman in 2021, has overseen a return to Microsoft\u2019s former glory days. Once best known for selling software, it has transitioned into a cloud computing and business services giant, competing with Apple for the title of the world\u2019s most valuable public company<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Microsoft has also invested heavily in AI. In January, it announced a \u201cmultiyear, multibillion dollar investment\u201d in OpenAI, which created ChatGPT and has been a leader in generative AI that can take simple text prompts and create various types of media. That deal prompted an antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and has drawn similar scrutiny from E.U. and U.K. officials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concerns about AI have also been raised in relation to the upcoming U.S. election, as well as the many elections around the world this year. A string of recent deepfakes have already fooled some internet users by using digitally replicated images and voices of celebrities, including Swift<\/a>, Scarlett Johansson<\/a> and the popular influencer MrBeast<\/a>, to make it look like they\u2019re advertising a certain product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Efforts to spread disinformation online are not new. But as the country enters the first major election cycle with the potential to be heavily influenced by the capabilities of generative AI, some worry about how prepared tech platforms are to detect and properly label the anticipated influx of political deepfakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nadella said the technology is there when it comes to tackling disinformation and misinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThen the question, again, comes back to: How do we build consensus between parties, candidates, and the norms around what is acceptable or not acceptable?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nadella said social media platforms could approach the AI challenge the same way they\u2019ve dealt with past problems. He pointed to the cooperation between tech companies and law enforcement in cracking down on botnets, which are networks of malware-infected computer devices used by malicious actors to execute scams and cyberattacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Like many of its fellow tech giants, Microsoft launched its own AI chatbot last year, originally known as Bing Chat before being rebranded as Copilot. Soon after its initial rollout in February 2023, users noticed the chatbot exhibited some belligerent tendencies<\/a> \u2014 such as threatening an Associated Press reporter and disparaging their physical appearance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To Nadella, generative AI is more a tool than it is a danger. He said he views the technology as an assistant to human workflows, hence why the chatbot is named \u201cCopilot\u201d and not \u201cAutopilot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is not about replacing the human in the loop,\u201d he said. \u201cIn fact, it\u2019s about empowering the human.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Still, workers across creative industries have expressed concerns about generative AI technologies borrowing from human talent without permission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In November, a group of artists filed an amended copyright lawsuit against several companies that specialize in AI-generated art. Among them was Midjourney, which was alleged to have used the work of thousands of artists<\/a>, dead and alive, to train its AI program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n