Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told employees Wednesday that Anthropic's limits on requests submitted to the startup's high-end Fable artificial intelligence model don't make sense. Nadella questioned why a creation tool would have such editorial control during remarks to engineers working on Microsoft's Copilot AI software. The criticism comes as executives express interest in cost-efficient models for software development tasks, with Chinese startup Moonshot AI announcing an open-source model Thursday that it said surpasses recent releases from Anthropic and OpenAI.
Nadella Questions Fable Request Restrictions
"If you use Fable, when it refuses for any random thing, it just is like, when was the last time you had a creation tool that was so editorially controlled?" Nadella told engineers according to a copy of his remarks provided to CNBC. "It doesn't make sense."
Nadella also stated that it makes no economic sense for only two companies to possess token capital while everyone else rents it. "It can't be that there are only two companies in the world with token capital, and everybody else is renting it," he said. Microsoft declined to comment on the remarks.
Anthropic Fable Blocks Certain User Requests
When end users ask Fable about some aspects of creating large-scale models, Anthropic might send responses from an older version, according to a support page. Some people have called out the rejections on social media.
Anthropic said when it announced Fable 5 in early June that it was attempting to reduce false positives for blocked requests. Three days after the introduction, Anthropic cut off Fable access to comply with a U.S. government export control directive. On July 1 the company restored the model, saying "the new safeguards will flag a slightly higher fraction of harmless requests than the previous Fable safeguards."
Microsoft Invested $5 Billion in Anthropic Partnership
In November Microsoft said it was making a $5 billion investment in Anthropic, as the startup agreed to spend $30 billion on Microsoft's Azure cloud. This year Microsoft unveiled Copilot Cowork, a business productivity assistant that draws on the startup's models.
Microsoft offers the Foundry service where developers can adopt over 11,000 models, including some from Anthropic and OpenAI. In April Microsoft said it had over 20 million paid seats for the work-centric Copilot, or 4% of the cloud-based Office customer base.
Microsoft Shares Fall 17% Amid AI Model Competition
Microsoft shares have fallen 17% so far this year, while the Nasdaq Composite index has gained 11%. Investors have worried that Microsoft could face disruption from models that quickly write software, as the company allocates tens of billions per quarter to data center expansion.
Microsoft tied itself tightly to OpenAI through a series of investments, but the two companies drifted and became competing with each other after the abrupt 2023 ousting and reinstatement of OpenAI's CEO, Sam Altman. OpenAI said in April it would bring its models beyond Azure to Amazon Web Services. Microsoft announced a series of in-house models, including one for coding, in June. Its stake in OpenAI's for-profit business was worth $135 billion as of October.
FAQ
What did Microsoft CEO Nadella say about Anthropic's Fable AI model?
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told employees Wednesday that Anthropic's limits on requests submitted to Fable don't make sense, questioning why a creation tool would have such editorial control.
How much did Microsoft invest in Anthropic?
In November Microsoft said it was making a $5 billion investment in Anthropic, as the startup agreed to spend $30 billion on Microsoft's Azure cloud.
