The people who design and deploy AI systems must be accountable for how their systems operate. We should draw on human institutional experience with other technologies to develop norms for assigning accountability for the results of AI systems.
This principle assigns moral responsibility but does not specify legal accountability, indemnification, or consumer redress — making it aspirational rather than legally operative.
This document describes Microsoft's internal ethical framework for AI and does not directly alter consumer data rights, impose fees, or restrict legal recourse — it is a voluntary policy statement. Consumers using Microsoft AI products such as Copilot or Azure OpenAI Service are subject to separate, binding Terms of Service and Privacy Policies that govern data collection, use, and sharing. You can review Microsoft's binding Privacy Statement at https://privacy.microsoft.com to understand what data Microsoft actually collects and how it is used.