Microsoft commits $25 million to new AI for Accessibility program

Microsoft is going all in on AI, and that's as evident as ever at this year'south Build developer conference. Now, much as information technology did with its AI for Earth programme in 2022, Microsoft is looking to use AI to tackle another area: Accessibility

Today, Microsoft committed $25 million to AI for Accessibility, a new 5-year program to tap into AI every bit a way to aid more one billion people with disabilities around the world.

"Around the world, simply one in 10 people with disabilities has access to assistive technologies and products," Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said in a blog mail today. "Past making AI solutions more than widely bachelor, we believe technology tin have a broad impact."

The AI for Accessibility programme volition see Microsoft seeding grants to developers and organizations for using an "AI-first approach" to building tools that aid people with disabilities in their work, life, and making connections. Projects that Microsoft sees as showing the about promise volition receive larger technology investments and assistance from Microsoft AI experts to help the solutions scale.

Finally, Microsoft plans to utilise AI for Accessibility as a way to assist partners build AI into platform-level services and "maximize the accessibility of their offerings."

Microsoft says it is basing the AI for Accessibility program off of the success of AI for Earth. Subsequently launching last summer with a $2 million investment, Microsoft pledged some other $fifty million to AI for Earth in December, with the hope that the increased investment can help tackle pressing environmental issues effectually the globe.

AI for Globe and AI for Accessibility are part of a larger push by Microsoft, and the tech industry as a whole, to use AI to solve some of the earth'southward most pressing bug. Microsoft, specifically, has made its intentions known: it wants to "democratize AI".

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