Microsoft AI, the tech big’s analysis lab, introduced the discharge of three foundational AI fashions on Thursday that may generate textual content, voice, and pictures.
The discharge alerts Microsoft’s continued push to construct out its personal stack of multimodal AI fashions — and compete with rival AI labs — though it stays tied to OpenAI.
MAI-Transcribe-1 transcribes speech throughout 25 completely different languages into textual content and is 2.5 instances sooner than Microsoft’s Azure Quick providing, in line with an organization press launch. MAI-Voice-1 is an audio-generating mannequin. This voice mannequin permits customers to generate 60 seconds of audio in a single second and permits customers to create a customized voice. MAI-Picture-2 is a video-generating mannequin.
MAI-Picture-2 was initially launched on MAI Playground, a brand new massive language mannequin testing software program on March 19. Now, all three fashions are being launched on Microsoft Foundry and the transcription and voice fashions can be found in MAI Playground as properly.
The fashions have been developed by Microsoft’s MAI Superintelligence group, an AI analysis group led by Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, that was fashioned and introduced in November 2025.
“At Microsoft AI, we’re constructing Humanist AI. Now we have a definite view when creating our AI fashions — placing people on the middle, optimizing for a way individuals really talk, coaching for sensible use,” Suleyman wrote in a weblog publish. “You’ll see extra fashions from us quickly in Foundry and instantly in Microsoft merchandise and experiences.”
In an more and more crowded LLM market, MAI hopes a promoting level for these fashions is that they’re cheaper than these from Google and OpenAI, the corporate wrote within the weblog publish.
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MAI-Transcribe-1 begins at $0.36 per hour. MAI-Voice-1 begins at $22 per 1 million characters, and MAI-Picture-2 begins at $5 for 1 million tokens for textual content enter and $33 for 1 million tokens for picture output.
Regardless of releasing its personal fashions, Suleyman reaffirmed Microsoft’s dedication to its partnership with OpenAI in an interview with VentureBeat — though a latest renegotiation of that partnership allowed Microsoft to actually pursue this superintelligence analysis, Suleyman advised The Verge.
Microsoft has invested greater than $13 billion into the AI analysis lab and hosts its fashions in its varied merchandise by means of a multi-year partnership. Microsoft takes the identical stance with chips; it each produces its personal and buys from exterior gamers as properly.
