Harvard Medical School licenses consumer health content to Microsoft

(Reuters) -Harvard University said on Wednesday that its graduate medical school has entered a licensing agreement with Microsoft, granting the tech company access to its consumer health content on specific diseases and wellness topics. Microsoft will pay Harvard a licensing fee, a university spokesperson said in a statement, adding that the agreement was made through Harvard Health Publishing, the consumer health division of Harvard Medical School. The agreement comes as part of the company's broader strategy to reduce its dependence on ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news earlier in the day, said the partnership will help enhance Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant with health-related content. The latest version of Copilot, expected to launch as early as this month, will utilize content from Harvard Health Publishing to provide answers to user questions on medical and wellness topics, the university said. Copilot has so far relied primarily on OpenAI's models to power tools across its productivity suite, including Word and Outlook. Microsoft has recently begun integrating Anthropic's Claude and is also developing its own AI models, as it looks to diversify its artificial intelligence strategy. (Reporting by Rishabh Jaiswal and Rajveer Singh Pardesi in Bengaluru; Additional reported by Mrinmay Dey; Editing by Shailesh Kuber, Alan Barona and Sherry Jacob-Phillips)

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