microsoft announced Thursday that it will continue to incorporate startup Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology into its products for customers other than the U.S. Department of the Army. The statement came on the same day that the federal agency notified Anthropic that it was classifying the company as a supply chain risk. Anthropic later said it intended to challenge the move in court.
“Our lawyers have reviewed this designation and have concluded that Anthropic products, including Claude, will continue to be available to our non-Department of the Army customers through platforms such as M365, GitHub, and Microsoft’s AI Foundry, and that they can continue to work with Anthropic on non-defense-related projects,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email.
Microsoft provides technology to various US government agencies. Microsoft 365 productivity software is widely used within the Department of the Army. Microsoft announced in September that it would integrate Anthropic’s generative artificial intelligence models, along with models from OpenAI, into the Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on for Microsoft 365 subscriptions.
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