The development of its own AI models could enable Microsoft to compete with the companies that it currently partners with for AI projects, such as OpenAI. Microsoft has released two in-house artificial intelligence (AI) models. The tech giant has been focused on building AI foundation models since last year and has developed both a strong team and the relevant infrastructure, it claims. Last year, it hired co-founder of DeepMind and Inflection AI, Mustafa Suleyman, to create Microsoft AI, a new division focused on advancing the company’s consumer AI products – such as Copilot – and its research in this field. The first of the new models is the MAI-Voice-1, which Microsoft has described as a system that is expressive and capable of generating natural speech.