AI in practice

Microsoft proposed using DALL-E to US military last year

Matthias Bastian

Midjourney prompted by THE DECODER

Microsoft proposed to the U.S. Department of Defense in 2023 that it use OpenAI's DALL-E AI image generator to develop software for military operations, according to internal company documents reviewed by The Intercept. A Microsoft presentation showed how the Pentagon could potentially use OpenAI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E for tasks like document analysis and machine maintenance. One Microsoft document suggested using images generated by DALL-E to train battlefield management systems, possibly as synthetic training data. In a statement to The Intercept, Microsoft said it had made this suggestion but had not actually implemented it. OpenAI was not involved in creating Microsoft's presentation and has not sold any of its tools directly to the U.S. military. While Microsoft is actively pursuing military projects, OpenAI has only recently opened up to that possibility, with the limitation that its technologies cannot be used to develop weapons or harm humans.

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