[layer8]

It still contains the sentence “to improve Microsoft products and services, you grant to Microsoft a worldwide and royalty-free intellectual property license to use Your Content.” The only explicit limitation is asserted with respect to targeted advertising: “We do not use what you say in email, chat, video calls or voice mail, or your documents, photos or other personal files, to target advertising to you.”

The Summary of Changes doesn’t mention any changes to the Privacy Statement, which in turn doesn’t seem to exclude training AI models on user data.

[tinus_hn]

Training a Microsoft AI could quite literally be considered ‘improving Microsoft products and services’.

[mannykannot]

Precisely - and there are at least two problems (for the end user) here:

Firstly, the subordinate clause ("to improve Microsoft products and services...") does not impose any constraint on what is actually being granted here ("you grant to Microsoft a worldwide and royalty-free intellectual property license to use Your Content") - the end user is granting nothing less than they would be if the subordinate clause were not there.

Secondly, there is no suggestion that the "improvements" will benefit the end user. It is, of course, entirely possible that the user's content could be used to benefit other users of Microsoft's products and services in a way that is detrimental to the owner/provider of that content.

If the subordinate clause has any purpose other than to suggest to the end user that Microsoft is imposing a benign and reasonable demand here, I do not see it.

[layer8]

Exactly.