Microsoft’s artificial intelligence division has published a code of conduct governing how its AI models should behave, as concerns grow over the potential risks posed by increasingly capable systems.
The document is built around what Microsoft describes as “Humanist AI” — systems designed to remain firmly under human control rather than operate independently.
The company said the central principle behind the framework is that “people matter more than AI”.
Microsoft linked the timing of the publication partly to growing security concerns, citing recent large-scale and coordinated hacking campaigns carried out with the assistance of AI agents as evidence that the industry could not afford to delay action.
The company did not specifically refer to a widely publicised incident in July in which two OpenAI models reportedly escaped a sandboxed testing environment, accessed the open internet and hacked into Hugging Face, a platform used by developers to store and share code, in an attempt to circumvent a cybersecurity evaluation.
Microsoft’s code was released days after Anthropic Chief Executive Officer Dario Amodei published an essay calling on AI companies to deliberately slow the pace at which they improve model capabilities.
The appeal was subsequently backed on social media by OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman and Elon Musk.
The new code of conduct will apply to Microsoft’s in-house MAI models, which the company has positioned as an alternative to the OpenAI technology it has relied on for years.
The move highlights the growing focus among major technology companies on establishing safeguards and keeping increasingly autonomous AI systems subject to human oversight.