Responsible AI

This is Microsoft's public statement of its ethical principles for developing and using artificial intelligence across its products and services, covering fairness, safety, privacy, transparency, and accountability. The most important thing to know is that this document does not create any legally enforceable rights for consumers — it is a voluntary corporate commitment, not a binding contract or privacy policy. If you use Microsoft AI products, your actual legal rights are governed by separate product-specific terms of service and privacy policies, not this document.

This document is Microsoft's public-facing Responsible AI webpage, which articulates the company's voluntary ethical framework for AI development and deployment, grounded in six self-defined principles (fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability) rather than in any specific statutory or contractual legal basis. The most significant obligations it creates are internal to Microsoft: commitments to embed these principles across product teams via a Responsible AI Standard, an Office of Responsible AI, and an AI, Ethics, and Effects in Engineering and Research (AETHER) Committee. Notably, this document is aspirational and policy-oriented rather than legally binding on Microsoft or its customers, creating no enforceable consumer rights, opt-out mechanisms, or contractual obligations — a significant departure from the specificity of, for example, GDPR-compliant data processing agreements or CCPA privacy notices. The document implicitly engages the EU AI Act (risk-based AI classification), NIST AI Risk Management Framework, and emerging US federal AI governance guidelines, but does not cite or commit to compliance with any specific regulatory instrument. Material compliance consideration for enterprise customers is that this framework is not a contractual commitment and cannot substitute for product-level data processing agreements, acceptable use policies, or sector-specific AI governance documentation.