Microsoft is developing a new generative AI model that will take lots of data and energy to train, according to a new report from The Information published Monday.

Two Microsoft employees tell the outlet that the model has been dubbed MAI-1 internally and is being developed by a team led by Mustafa Suleyman. The ex-Google AI executive worked at AI firm Inflection before Microsoft bought Inflection's IP and poached most of its staff, including Suleyman, who joined the tech giant in March. The employees say that MAI-1 is separate from Inflection's Pi models.

Microsoft is reportedly reserving lots of servers with Nvidia graphics cards to train MAI-1, which is expected to be bigger than Microsoft's previous open-source AI models. This means it will consume tons of electricity during its training phase—a broader issue researchers flag as harmful to the environment. Microsoft declined to comment on MAI-1, but linked to a Monday post from CTO Kevin Scott which states that Microsoft is and will continue to build AI models, some of which "have names like Turing, and MAI."

"I'm not sure why this is news," Scott writes. "But just to summarize the obvious: we build big supercomputers to train AI models."

Recommended by Our Editors

Google's Agentic AI Tool Gemini Spark Is Now Available. Here's How to Try It

I Used ChatGPT to Build Complex Spreadsheets Fast. Here’s How You Can, Too

GitHub Copilot Costs Skyrocket As Users Are Pushed to Per-Token Billing

Microsoft continues to conduct AI research and development to compete with big-tech rivals at Amazon, Apple, and Google. In the past eight months, Microsoft created a dedicated Copilot AI key on new Windows 11 PCs, pushed Copilot to the lower-right taskbar of Windows 11 PCs, released the Phi-3 Mini AI model, and rolled out priority access to OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo for 365 subscribers, to name a few of its efforts to promote the use of AI.

Last week, emails between Bill Gates and Microsoft's leading executives revealed Microsoft has long been concerned about Google's AI tech—fears that spurred its investment in OpenAI.

But Microsoft's AI tools have also faced controversy. In March, a Microsoft AI employee wrote open letters to the company and the US Federal Trade Commission expressing concern over Copilot Designer, arguing that it was creating "harmful images" without adequately warning users. Days later, Microsoft blocked some prompt terms in an effort to censor its AI tool. And last month, a former Microsoft Azure employee raised questions about what Microsoft's "toxicity testing" entails after the tech giant pulled its WizardLM-2 AI model from the internet.