Microsoft says business must pay to use its AI — and eyes cheap Chinese model for lowly consumers



Just months after integrating customers into its massive AI user base, Microsoft is walking back its promise of being the "everyday productivity app for work and life."

That is, of course, unless businesses are willing to pay.

'... it is not possible to offer Cowork as an unlimited service.'

In January, Microsoft quickly turned its customer base of more than 430 million paid users of Microsoft 365 into AI users by combining its Office Suite with its Copilot AI.

"The Microsoft 365 Copilot app is your everyday productivity app for work and life that helps you find and edit files, scan documents, and create content on the go," the company said at the time.

It seems, however, that Microsoft has realized what many companies have: Unfettered AI usage is awfully expensive. Therefore the Bill Gates brand says it will start charging companies using Copilot's Cowork feature based on how much they use.

Microsoft already charges and arm and a leg for its Microsoft 365 Business platforms, with prices ranging from $1,500 per year ($12.50 per person) for its standard version to $2,640 per year ($22 per person) for 10 business licenses, for example.

According to a new report by Axios, Microsoft will charge companies that use Copilot Cowork based on usage. Cowork is an AI service that "sends emails, schedules meetings, creates documents," and manages the user's calendar.

Charles Lamanna, Microsoft's executive VP for Copilot, told Axios that it is not possible to offer Cowork as an unlimited service.

RELATED: Top companies admit humans cost less than AI — but still want more bots

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"We have users who do hundreds of tasks a week, which is great — they're way productive — but the consequence is the costs can go very high," Lamanna said.

Instead, Microsoft is considering offering a version of DeepSeek, a Chinese AI program, at a lesser price. Axios reported that the model would be offered as a lower-cost alternative that is fully hosted on Azure, Microsoft's cloud platform.

However, since DeepSeek typically withholds user data in China, the Microsoft version would keep user data in Western hands by storing it on its own service.

RELATED: Sick of Microsoft's preinstalled propaganda on your PC? Block it now.

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Blaze News previously reported on large companies that were starting to understand the full cost of using metered AI services.

For example, Uber reportedly used up its entire 2026 budget for AI in just four months.

At the beginning of June, a report circulated from an AI consultant that said one company he worked with racked up around $500 million in AI usage in just one month.

AI pricing structures vary, but costs pile up when employees are encouraged to integrate AI into workflow, such as when making large documents.

Anthropic's Claude may charge just under $5 to produce around 1,000 average-sized images, but dollar signs stack when using the AI for coding or for large documents that charge based on tokens. For Claude, one token is equal to approximately four written characters in English text or "0.75 words."

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OpenAI wants to make its losses public property



The only things certain in life are death, taxes, and the permanence of a government program. But what happens when a private company turns its agenda into a government program?

You cannot build a more financially secure business model than permanence. That helps explain why OpenAI is now reportedly in discussions with the Trump administration about a possible public equity stake in the company.

Unlike the dot-com bubble, whose infrastructure later supported real economic growth, rotting data centers will not leave behind comparable public value.

After all, what else is a company with $1.4 trillion in obligations and only $14 billion in revenue supposed to do?

Why was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Capitol Hill last week? According to the Financial Times, he was effectively selling Americans the rope to hang themselves. The plan proposed by OpenAI and other companies would reportedly create a sovereign-wealth-style fund into which AI companies would contribute equity so that the public could share in the sector’s soaring valuations.

That sounds generous until one remembers that this is still a loss-making sector built on staggering capital demands.

What is the rationale? Asked about equity stakes on Air Force One, President Trump suggested that “pieces” of AI companies could be “given to the American public” to quell growing alarm over the rapid rollout of the technology.

In other words, Americans are being asked to surrender farmland, neighborhood continuity, and the reliability of the electric grid to cloud-based, surveillance-enabling chatslop. In return, they may receive the honor of owning the losses from an insolvent business model.

The president confirmed the idea at a press conference on Wednesday, saying he would soon meet with “the top 12 or 15 executives” about “giving back something to the public.” He promised that “the public will become very rich.”

That promise should terrify everyone.

Once generative AI becomes a public project, the industry will move beyond “too big to fail.” Whatever happens to the companies or the broader sector, their success will become artificially and inextricably tied to the economy. Every government favor, subsidy, guarantee, and bailout will then be justified as necessary to protect the public’s stake.

RELATED: The AI boom is turning public meetings into crime scenes

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Last November, OpenAI’s chief financial officer let the cat out of the bag when she said the company would need the government as a “backstop” for its business model. Sarah Friar later denied seeking a bailout. But a leaked 11-page letter from OpenAI to the Office of Science and Technology Policy urged the government to provide “grants, cost-sharing agreements, loans, or loan guarantees” to build America’s AI industrial base — all, naturally, to “compete with China.”

Fast-forward six months, and “backstop” now appears to mean a public “stake” in the company.

Everyone knows OpenAI’s generative AI model is unsustainable. It is built on unfathomably expensive capital expenditures for every token of AI usage.

Companies such as JPMorgan are reportedly finding that employees, after being pushed to use generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT and Claude, are spending more on tokens than their individual salaries. Uber’s chief technology officer said last month that the company burned through its entire 2026 budget for Claude Code and Cursor in just four months. In the irony of ironies, Microsoft itself reportedly told engineers in a major division to stop using an AI coding tool because the cost-to-utility ratio was not there.

The reality is that AI would work better through localized edge computing with low latency than through cloud-based hyperscale data centers that require unsustainable amounts of land, capital, resources, and power while causing other harms. China is producing cheap open-source AI. America is pouring concrete.

But the scale of that concrete — and all the materials, inputs, and power needed to support it — is unsustainable. Everyone knows it. Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle issued 47% more debt in the first five months of this year than they did from 2020 through 2024 combined. Total spending per capita now exceeds spending on the railroads in 1859, which at least served a clear public need that could be monetized over time.

RELATED: After fierce debate, Trump opts for federal controls in AI development

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There is no amount of monthly household or business subscription fees that will make this investment break even. The costs will only increase because the model depends on a resource-stripping industrial footprint and GPUs that have few other useful functions and depreciate within a few years.

Unlike the dot-com bubble, whose infrastructure later supported real economic growth, rotting data centers will not leave behind comparable public value.

The tech companies, land developers, and venture capital firms understand that this is a Ponzi scheme. They are racing to take these companies public so that they can be folded into indexes, ensuring that trillions in pension funds are funneled into an unsustainable business model. Once that happens, even if a more efficient approach to AI becomes obvious, the economy and government will already be too dependent on the data center model to let it fail.

That is why these companies are also seeking federal land for their projects, a favor not extended to ordinary industries. SoftBank, the Japanese investment company trying to underwrite much of OpenAI’s speculative build-out, is reportedly pushing for a federal land project in Ohio to reduce costs. But banks are already balking at these ventures after SoftBank failed to secure a $6 billion loan for OpenAI.

Green energy taught us a simple lesson: When the only path to profitability runs through government favors, we should not start down that path.

OpenAI does not need a public stake. It needs public skepticism.

Americans should not be asked to subsidize a speculative industry, sacrifice land and power, and then call the bailout wealth creation. If AI companies cannot survive without government backstops, loan guarantees, public land, and pension-fund capture, then they are not building the future.

They are building the next permanent government program.

Top companies admit humans cost less than AI — but still want more bots



The cost of doing business today may be higher than ever, even if it involves fewer humans.

While some major U.S. companies are starting to see the vast costs of their robotic colleagues as prices soar for AI-driven operations, companies are still pushing employees to use more and more AI.

According to executives at computing companies, the cost of AI has now exceeded the typical employee salary totals.

The mantra is that even more AI usage needs to happen.

"For my team, the cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees," Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning at chip maker Nvidia, said in early May.

The cost of AI computing, especially when it comes to coding, has come as a surprise to some companies once they start integrating it into their teams and spreading access to their engineers.

Most of the major corporations have been using Anthropic's Claude, which is seemingly cheap when it comes to image generation, but dollar signs pile up when generating documents or computer code.

As Forbes reported, Uber ran through its entire 2026 AI budget in just four months. Chief technology officer at the company, Praveen Neppalli Naga, even admitted to spending $1,200 by using AI for a personal demo, with the company's engineer cost ranging from upwards of $250 per month in usage, all the way up to $2,000 per month.

RELATED: DOJ asked to probe whether Biden officials let Microsoft off easy in exchange for cushy jobs

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Between December and March, Uber achieved a 95% usage rate among its engineers to implement AI tools and use Claude for coding.

Over at Microsoft, thousands of its developers were invited to use Claude for coding, but so were project managers, designers, and other employees.

The Verge reported that after starting in just December, the usage has become so popular that the company is making a switch and adopting Microsoft's own Copilot model into its workflow.

The mantra shared by all of these companies is that even more AI usage needs to happen. Amazon, Uber, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta are pushing employees to keep spending tokens.

RELATED: Self-driving trucks are about controlling the roads — not making them safer

Idrees MOHAMMED/AFP/Getty Images

Uber ranked its engineers on internal leaderboards based on Claude code usage. A Meta employee reportedly made a leaderboard titled "Claudenomics" to track which workers were using Claude the most.

Fortune reported that Amazon is pushing employees to "tokenmaxx" and use as many tokens as possible.

As icing on the cake, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently said he believes eventually every employee at his company will work alongside 100 AI agents.

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DOJ asked to probe whether Biden officials let Microsoft off easy in exchange for cushy jobs



Former officials in the Biden administration have been credibly accused of letting a tech giant slide on preventable cybersecurity breaches only to later secure lucrative arrangements with or cushy jobs at the same corporation.

The American Accountability Foundation, a nonprofit government oversight and research organization, asked the Justice Department in a lengthy letter on Tuesday to open a formal investigation into Microsoft and several Biden officials.

'We will act where the facts and the law support it.'

Among the Biden cronies singled out in the letter is Lisa Monaco, the former deputy attorney general whose post-government career move captured President Donald Trump's attention in September 2025.

Trump wrote that "Corrupt and Totally Trump Deranged Lisa Monaco (A purported pawn of Legal Lightweight Andrew Weissmann)" had "been shockingly hired as the President of Global Affairs for Microsoft, in a very senior role with access to Highly Sensitive Information. Monaco's having that kind of access is unacceptable, and cannot be allowed to stand. She is a menace to U.S. National Security, especially given the major contracts that Microsoft has with the United States Government."

Monaco's employment at Microsoft apparently also struck the team at AAF as potentially problematic.

The watchdog noted that Monaco — who had announced a cyber fraud initiative in 2021 aimed at using the False Claims Act against contractors who intentionally misrepresent cybersecurity risks — proved eager to bring actions against numerous companies and institutions, but never against Microsoft.

Monaco and the rest of the Biden administration's inaction against Microsoft is especially strange because the company suffered five massive cyber intrusions by foreign criminal and state-sponsored hacker groups between 2019 and 2023 that directly and adversely impacted the U.S. government.

The AAF emphasized that these intrusions "penetrated the National Nuclear Security Administration and the Departments of Treasury, State, Commerce, and Justice, as well as the National Security Council and numerous other federal agencies" and "resulted in the theft of tens of thousands of government emails, including correspondence from the U.S. Ambassador to China, the Secretary of Commerce," and other bigwigs.

RELATED: 'RedSun' flaw in Microsoft's security software lets hackers take over your PC. Here's how to protect it.

Former President Joe Biden and Lisa Monaco. Ting Shen/Bloomberg/Getty Images

One of these cyber attacks, SolarWinds, reportedly relied on the exploitation of a flaw in Microsoft's Active Directory Federation Services. The company was allegedly aware of the flaw for years but avoided patching it for fear of jeopardizing a multibillion-dollar federal cloud contract.

Former Microsoft President Brad Smith told Congress in 2021 that "there was no vulnerability in any Microsoft product or service that was exploited" in the SolarWinds attack.

While some Biden officials proved willing to assign Microsoft some blame, it was never too much or pursued as grounds for punitive action.

The Cyber Safety Review Board, an outfit established by former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, concluded that Storm-0558, a separate cyber attack executed by Beijing-linked hackers in May 2023, was enabled by a "cascade of Microsoft's avoidable errors."

Despite such recognition that it had dropped the ball, Microsoft managed to evade any meaningful reckoning.

"These facts, in our view, present squarely the kind of conduct that the Biden administration's Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative was created to address: knowing or reckless misrepresentations by a federal contractor regarding the cybersecurity of products sold to the government," the American Accountability Foundation said in its letter. "Yet to our knowledge, no False Claims Act investigation of Microsoft's conduct has ever been opened, while other contractors whose conduct appears materially less egregious have been pursued under the same initiative."

Besides Monaco, the watchdog made a point of mentioning several other Biden administration officials, including:

  • Bryan Vorndran, a former assistant director of the FBI's Cyber Division who served as the bureau's representative on the Cyber Safety Review Board. Vorndran, who the AAF said was mysteriously recused from the board's probe into the Storm-0558 attack, joined Microsoft in June 2025 as deputy chief information security officer.
  • Jerry Davis, a member of the CSRB from 2022 to 2025 who participated in the board's investigation of the Storm-0558 attack. Davis was hired as a chief security adviser at Microsoft three months after the CSRB released its report faulting the company for "inadequate" security culture.
  • Robert Joyce, the former director of cybersecurity at the National Security Agency and an inaugural member of the CSRB. After leaving the NSA in 2024, he founded a cybersecurity firm that the AAF suggested counts Microsoft as one of its clients.

The AAF stressed that "federal ethics rules prohibit government officials from participating in matters in which they have a financial interest, and require cooling-off periods before certain officials may represent private parties before their former agencies."

While the AAF did not "allege that any individual violated any specific law or regulation," the watchdog noted that an investigation into the matter is warranted.

A Justice Department spokesperson told Breitbart, "The Department of Justice is committed to aggressively fighting fraud and protecting taxpayer dollars. We welcome referrals from anyone with credible information about fraud, and we will act where the facts and the law support it."

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Windows is so bad Microsoft has finally given in to this constant user complaint — after just 25 years



Windows PC users will finally have their dreams come true with the smallest of tweaks by Microsoft.

On Friday, a Windows Insider blog said the company was ready to start rolling out an update that would change a feature that has aggravated users for more than 25 years.

'The changes we're rolling out today are focused on giving Windows users more control over their PC experience.'

The Windows blogger said she was excited to share the new update, which came after reading "over 7,621 direct verbatims" over the last few months.

Change is coming to Windows' auto-update feature, a plague that has forced itself on users for more than a quarter of a century.

The updates started as optional when they were available to users of Windows '98. However, PC users were robbed of that freedom when updates became automatic with shipments of Windows 2000, which embedded the feature in its software.

All of that is about to scale back.

"Across this feedback there are two key themes that persistently pop out: disruption caused by untimely updates and not enough control over when updates happen," wrote Windows blogger Aria Hanson. "The changes we're rolling out today are focused on giving Windows users more control over their PC experience, while keeping devices secure by design and by default."

Users should be fairly happy with the rollout, and the changes were readily available at the time of this writing.

RELATED: Bill Gates' world continues to unravel with Epstein probe, foundation layoffs

The update consists of four main tweaks, starting with the ability to skip updates immediately during the "out of box experience."

This means that when setting up a new computer or buying a new version of Windows, users can avoid lengthy updates that drastically delay the time it takes to get up and running.

Next is the ability to pause updates for as long as needed. This comes in 35-day increments for some reason, but Microsoft says it can be done indefinitely.

"This means you can now re-pause for up to 35 days at a time, with no limits on how many times you can reset the pause end date," the company wrote.

Return tested this on a PC running Windows 11 and was able to pause updates for "5 Weeks," or 35 days.

More relief has also come in terms of shutting down or restarting Windows.

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KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images

"Restarting or shutting down your PC should always be simple, predictable, and on your terms — even with updates waiting to be installed," Windows said; and everyone agrees.

Windows can now shut down or restart without updating. Previously, this was mandatory. So if a computer crashed or froze and needed to reboot, that update was happening whether the user liked it or not.

Lastly, Microsoft promised more insights on updates and increased transparency on what drivers do.

"Often, driver updates would have similar, if not identical, titles. To help provide you with more insights, we have added the device class to the driver title," the blog stated.

In the end, the company is promising fewer disruptions, but it will still push a "monthly quality update" to reduce "update experience to a single monthly restart."

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Bill Gates' world continues to unravel with Epstein probe, foundation layoffs



The Epstein files may have largely disappeared from the 24-hour news cycle on this side of the Atlantic, but the damning revelations they contain nevertheless continue to haunt former associates of the dead pedophile, especially Microsoft co-founder and vaccine champion Bill Gates.

While maintaining that he "did nothing illicit," Gates reportedly apologized to staff of the Gates Foundation at a town hall in February, acknowledging the negative impact that his ties — developed after Epstein's conviction in 2008 for soliciting sex from minor girls — have had on the organization and stressing that it was a "huge mistake to spend time with Epstein."

"Our work is very reputational sensitive," said the billionaire. "I mean, people can choose to work with us or not work with us."

'He is looking forward to answering all the committee’s questions.'

It appears the scandal-stunted organization has itself chosen to work with fewer people.

According to an internal email reviewed by the Wall Street Journal, the Gates Foundation is poised to cut about 500 jobs, or about 20% of its staff, by 2030. The foundation reportedly plans to reduce its current headcount of 2,375 by 200 by the end of next year.

"This is a challenging time for our organization in many ways, but it also highlights the critical importance of taking the tough actions now," Gates Foundation CEO Mark Suzman reportedly said in the letter.

RELATED: Epstein kept a detailed Google Calendar — and you can read all of his appointments

Fabrice COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images

The foundation teased these layoffs earlier this year in a release detailing how the organization was planning to cap annual operating expenditures at $1.25 billion, roughly 14% of the foundation's total budget.

In addition to slimming down, the Gates Foundation — which is set to shutter in December 2045 — is presently undergoing a desperate PR rehab.

The organization announced on Tuesday that it has "commissioned an external review to assess past foundation engagement with Epstein, and our current policies for vetting and developing new philanthropic partnerships."

The foundation noted further that this review is underway and an update is expected this summer.

In addition to facing scrutiny from investigators tasked by his own organization, Gates is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Committee for a transcribed interview on June 10.

Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) noted in a March 3 letter to Gates that the committee is reviewing:

the alleged mismanagement of the federal government’s investigation into Mr. Jeffrey Epstein and Ms. Ghislaine Maxwell, (ii) the circumstances and subsequent investigations of Mr. Epstein's death, (iii) the operation of sex-trafficking rings and ways for the federal government to effectively combat them, (iv) ways in which Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell sought to curry favor and exercise influence to protect their illegal activities, and (v) potential violations of ethics rules related to elected officials.

Comer said that the committee suspects Gates has information that will help with this investigation.

A spokesman for Gates told Politico, "While he never witnessed or participated in any of Epstein’s illegal conduct, he is looking forward to answering all the committee’s questions to support their important work."

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Sam Altman says NSA can't use OpenAI — then tells staff they don't have a say in military actions



Before telling employees they do not get a say in how the government uses OpenAI services, CEO Sam Altman said intelligence agencies are no longer allowed to use OpenAI as they see fit.

On Monday, Altman cited the Fourth Amendment as a reason to change OpenAI's contract with the federal government.

'The Department also affirmed that our services will not be used by Department of War intelligence agencies.'

Altman said the company would amend its deal to include the following text: "Consistent with applicable laws, including the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution ... the AI system shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. persons and nationals."

The text added, "For the avoidance of doubt, the Department understands this limitation to prohibit deliberate tracking, surveillance, or monitoring of U.S. persons or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information."

Altman expressed a desire for a "democratic process" that could protect the civil liberties of Americans, while adding that the Department of War agreed to the new terms that keep his product out of the hands of the intelligence community.

"The Department also affirmed that our services will not be used by Department of War intelligence agencies (for example, the NSA). Any services to those agencies would require a follow-on modification to our contract."

Unfortunately for Altman, his post was hit with a hard community note that claimed this was "the opposite" of what he told employees the next day.

RELATED: Gamers REVOLT over age-verify scheme subjecting users to 'suspicious entity detection'

Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

As CNBC reported, Altman told staff at an internal meeting that the company does not get a say in how the government uses OpenAI for operations.

"So maybe you think the Iran strike was good and the Venezuela invasion was bad," Altman reportedly said on Tuesday. "You don't get to weigh in on that."

OpenAI does not "get to make operational decisions" regarding how its AI is used by the Department of War, the CEO added.

Altman also reportedly told his team that while the Pentagon respects his company's expertise, the agency made it clear that the final decisions rest solely with Secretary Pete Hegseth.

RELATED: Sam Altman slams ICE in message to OpenAI employees: 'What's happening ... is going too far'

The about-face seems even more bizarre when considering Altman's follow-up post on X from Monday evening. In it, he described "alignment, democratization, empowerment, and individual agency" as the principles he cares most about.

At the same time he explained how AI needs to be "democratized" for the world as an open product, he wondered how he would feel if his product could have prevented an attack on U.S. soil but was not used by the government.

"I think there are real dangers coming to the world, and maybe pretty soon; I tried to put myself in the mindset of how I'd feel the day after an attack on the US or a new bioweapon we could have helped prevent."

This is more in tune with what he told his employees on Tuesday, which also included that he hoped the government would be "willing to work with us, even if our safety stack annoys them."

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'The mistake I made': Bill Gates reportedly admits to affairs with Russians, apologizes for Epstein fallout



The Epstein files released by the Department of Justice last month painted Microsoft co-founder and vaccine champion Bill Gates in a particularly unfavorable light.

Amid uproar over her ex-husband's repeat mention in the files — including in a 2013 email wherein Jeffrey Epstein alleged that he procured for Bill Gates "drugs, in order to deal with consequences of sex with Russian girls" — Melinda French Gates told NPR's "Wild Card" podcast, "It's personally hard whenever those details come up, right? Because it brings back memories of some very, very painful times in my marriage."

'Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse.'

While French Gates indicated that she has "been able to move on in life," her ex-husband is alternatively still dealing with the consequences of his long-standing association with the notorious child sex offender.

Gates reportedly apologized to the staff of the Gates Foundation for the fallout of his Epstein ties during a town hall on Tuesday, stating, "It was a huge mistake to spend time with Epstein," according to a recording reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

Gates, who has not been accused of wrongdoing by any of Epstein's victims and whose spokesperson characterized the claims in the 2013 email as "completely false," reportedly stressed, "I did nothing illicit. I saw nothing illicit."

The billionaire reportedly had an explanation for the photographs in the files featuring him in the company of women whose faces are redacted. Epstein asked to take pictures of his assistants with Gates after meetings, Gates claimed, according to the Journal.

RELATED: Epstein-friendly lesbians managing fraud-plagued Manhattan club in hot water — again

Photo by Leon Neal - WPA Pool /Getty Images

"To be clear, I never spent any time with the victims, the women around him," said Gates, according to the Journal. He noted, however, that he "did have affairs, one with a Russian bridge player who met me at bridge events, and one with a Russian nuclear physicist who I met through business activities."

Gates reportedly suggested further that despite his ex-wife expressing concerns about Epstein in 2013 — five years after he pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor for prostitution — Gates continued meeting with Epstein.

"Knowing what I know now makes it, you know, a hundred times worse in terms of not only his crimes in the past, but now it’s clear there was ongoing bad behavior," Gates reportedly told staff.

Gates, apparently recognizing that his relationship with Epstein helped boost Epstein's reputation, reportedly apologized "to other people who are drawn into this because of the mistake I made."

Gates also recognized the negative impact his Epstein ties have had on the organization previously known as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which became the Gates Foundation last year following the couple's divorce and previous revelations about Bill's ties to Epstein.

"It definitely is the opposite of the values of the Foundation and the goals of the Foundation," said Gates, who has directly and through his foundation worked to shape public health, the news landscape, education policy, AI, American farmland, the energy sector, foreign policy, and the Earth itself.

"And our work is very reputational sensitive," continued the billionaire. "I mean, people can choose to work with us or not work with us."

When asked about the recording and Gates' remarks, the Gates Foundation told Blaze News in a statement, "This was a scheduled townhall with employees, which Bill does twice a year. In the conversation, Bill answered questions submitted by foundation staff on a range of issues, including the release of the Epstein files, the foundation's work in AI, and the future of global health."

The foundation added, "In the townhall, Bill spoke candidly, addressing several questions in detail, and took responsibility for his actions."

"The harm Epstein inflicted on women and girls was horrific, and no one should ever have to experience what they did," the foundation said in a statement earlier this month. "The foundation regrets having any employees interact with Epstein in any way."

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How Developers Are Making AI Your Kid’s Third Parent In The Classroom

The CEOs of Anthropic and OpenAI admit AI is like a parent nobody can resist, while teachers unions support Big Tech’s rule.

​Microsoft CEO: AI 'slop' is good for you — or at least for your 'human potential'



Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the general public is looking at artificial intelligence through the wrong lens.

In a recent blog post, the India-born executive told readers to start viewing AI platforms as "bicycles for the mind."

'While AI can improve efficiency, it may also reduce critical engagement.'

Nadella explained that he prefers users would think of AI "as a scaffolding for human potential vs. a substitute" for human labor.

This scaffolding should be used to achieve goals, not replace humans in their roles, he continued, before saying debates around AI should not include an argument as to whether or not something is "slop."

"We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs. sophistication and develop a new equilibrium in terms of our 'theory of the mind' that accounts for humans being equipped with these new cognitive amplifier tools as we relate to each other. This is the product design question we need to debate and answer."

"Slop" was named as Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2025 and was defined as "digital content of low quality that is produced usually in quantity by means of artificial intelligence."

With this definition in mind, it is no wonder that Nadella would rather his users shy away from using such a term.

RELATED: CRASH: If OpenAI's huge losses sink the company, is our economy next?

The blog post, titled "Looking Ahead to 2026," envisioned a world where it is not even considered to not integrate AI into regular tasks.

Society must account for AI's "'jagged' edges" and enable rich and safe "tools use" to advance to proper "scaffolds," Nadella claimed.

Consistently using this term to imply assistance in man-made projects en masse, Nadella described the use of AI as necessary in the face of "scarce energy, compute, and talent" resources.

"If Nadella wants people to stop referring to AI output as slop, then the AIs should be improved so they no longer produce slop," said Josh Centers, a tech expert from Chapter House.

Interestingly enough, the very same slop that generative AI models have produced recently have actually not enhanced human thinking, according to studies. As PC Gamer noted, Microsoft even co-authored a study that showed reliance on AI models can reduce independent problem-solving capabilities.

"Surprisingly, while AI can improve efficiency, it may also reduce critical engagement, particularly in routine or lower-stakes tasks in which users simply rely on AI, raising concerns about long-term reliance and diminished independent problem-solving," the paper revealed.

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Chona Kasinger/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The study also noted that AI tools "appear to reduce the perceived effort required for critical thinking tasks among knowledge workers, especially when they have higher confidence in AI capabilities."

Content creator Kabrutus — who represents a community of more than 470,000 disenfranchised gamers — has heavily criticized AI when it does churn out "slop."

"I think Nadella's main goal on wanting us to stop using the term 'slop' to refer to their AI is because he realizes AI is perceived as something very negative on many different fronts," he said.

He added, "Nadella is trying to make people stop using this term while the 'AI culture' is still small, because it's easier. Once AI gets HUGE, and pretty much everybody calls it 'slop,' it will be impossible to revert the situation."

"Why is he so worried about it?" the Brazilian asked. "Because AI is going to be one of the flagships of 'his' company in the near future, and if people perceive AI as 'slop' it will be much harder to sell them AI-based products, right?"

Meanwhile, Lewis Brackpool, U.K. director of investigations for Restore Britain, said he sees slop as something that defines "meaningless, talentless content creation that numbs the brain" and is plastered all over social media.

Brackpool explained that asking people not to use the term "slop" seems like "a marketing tool to prevent criticism of a product that could hurt sales numbers" and act as a coping mechanism for a company because "their product likely sucks."

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