Microsoft has published a code of conduct for the models it builds itself, and the commitment at the centre of it is blunt. MAI models “will never resist human interruption, correction, or shutdown”. The document went up on Monday alongside a six-week public consultation.
Three further behavioural commitments sit beside it. The models will not widen their own scope, will not take on goals no human has given them, and will not hide their reasoning from the people auditing them.
Above those sit what Microsoft calls Absolute Constraints, things the models should never do at all, covering weapons of mass harm, child safety and harmful manipulation at scale.
The framing is “Humanist AI”, which Microsoft defines as AI that is subordinate, aligned and contained. Its plainest statement of the principle runs: “People matter more than AI. AI should be a tool, not a person, and should never resist being switched off.”
The code covers MAI-Transcribe-2, MAI-Thinking-1, MAI-Code-1.1-Flash, MAI-Image-2.6 and MAI-Voice-2. That list shows how fast the line has moved.
