Microsoft is notifying folks that its AI services should not be taken too seriously, echoing prior service-specific disclaimers.
In an update to the IT giant's Service Agreement, which takes effect on September 30, 2024, Redmond has declared that its Assistive AI isn't suitable for matters of consequence.
"AI services are not designed, intended, or to be used as substitutes for professional advice," Microsoft's revised legalese explains.
The changes to Microsoft's rules of engagement cover a few specific services, such as noting that Xbox customers should not expect privacy from platform partners.
"In the Xbox section, we clarified that non-Xbox third-party platforms may require users to share their content and data in order to play Xbox Game Studio titles and these third-party platforms may track and share your data, subject to their terms," the latest Service Agreement says.
There are also some clarifications regarding the handling of Microsoft Cashback and Microsoft Rewards.
But the most substantive revision is the addition of an AI Services section, just below a passage that says Copilot AI Experiences are governed by Bing's Terms of Use. Those using Microsoft Copilot with commercial data protection get a separate set of terms.
The tweaked consumer-oriented rules won't come as much of a surprise to anyone who has bothered to read the contractual conditions governing Microsoft's Bing and associated AI stuff. For example, there's now a Services Agreement prohibition on using AI Services for "Extracting Data."
"Unless explicitly permitted, you may not use web scraping, web harvesting, or web data extraction methods to extract data from the AI services," the agreement now says.
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Bing's Copilot AI Experience requirements aren't quite as explicit but they cover similar ground, stating that you may not "engage in activity that is harmful to the Online Services, including bot/scraping behaviors, technical attacks, excess usage, prompt-based manipulation, "jailbreaking", and other off-platform abuses."
The search engine's terms also since at least February 2023 – when Bing received its AI injection – have included a disclaimer about the general unreliability of Online Services: "The Online Services are for entertainment purposes; the Online Services are not error-free, may not work as expected and may generate incorrect information. You should not rely on the Online Services and you should not use the Online Services for advice of any kind. Your use of the Online Services is at your own risk."
The revised Service Agreement does go into more detail about what's not allowed. For example, the ban on "Reverse Engineering" specifically disallows attempting to ascertain the weights used in the AI models deployed by Microsoft.
"You may not use the AI services to discover any underlying components of the models, algorithms, and systems," the new terms say. "For example, you may not try to determine and remove the weights of models or extract any parts of the AI services from your device."
Also, there's now a clear ban on using Microsoft's AI services or data from those services "to create, train, or improve (directly or indirectly) any other AI service."
One other substantive contractual change involves a clarification about the mass arbitration. Large companies, which have tried to avoid costly court disputes by forcing complaints through a business-friendly arbitration process, have in recent years faced coordinated mass arbitration claims and found them not to their liking. The result has been rule revisions [PDF] from dispute resolution firms designed to streamline arbitrations involving 25 people or more.
Microsoft's Service Agreement revision has clarified that disputes involving at least 25 customers with similar claims who are represented by the same lawyers or coordinating lawyers fall under its definition of "Related Cases" – which are subject to American Arbitration Association's Mass Arbitration Supplementary Rules. ®