DoP Deep - AI principles in practice
Unpacking the AI principles and practices of Microsoft, Figma, Atlassian, Slack and more
🔒DoP Deep goes deeper into the concepts and ideas that are covered in the Weekly Briefing to help you learn lessons from the experiences of top tech companies. If you’d like to upgrade to receive them you can do so below. Or you can find out more about what you get as a paid subscriber here.
Hi product people 👋,
As we mentioned in the briefing, Microsoft recently came under fire for its controversial new AI feature, Recall. It works by keeping a track of everything a user does on their machine so that it can be searched later. Some folks were excited about the prospect of this but others were concerned about the potential privacy implications.
And rightly so. One of Microsoft’s AI principles is to protect the privacy and security of users and for some, this was a step too far. But Microsoft isn’t alone in grappling with this.
Users of Figma recently protested against the rollout of Figma AI and Slack found itself at the centre of a privacy storm after it released Slack AI. One company even went as far as to explicitly not include AI into their latest product to avoid concerns about AI and privacy. And at the heart of these backlashes is a perceived conflict between a company’s AI principles and what they do in practice.
In this Deep dive, we’re going to explore the AI principles of top companies and how these principles are put into practice with their latest AI feature releases. If you’re currently working on your own upcoming AI roadmap or are crafting your product’s AI principles, this should help give you some inspiration.
Coming up:
How this analysis is structured
AI principles in depth - company deep dives on the AI principles of top tier tech companies including: Microsoft, YouTube Music, Zendesk, Zoom, Spotify, Slack and more
How to develop your own AI principles - key trends, takeaways and tools to inform your principles
All of the companies’ AI principles featured in full
How this deep dive is structured
To help us understand the AI principles of leading companies - and how these principles are applied in practice, we’ll take a look at each of the companies featured principles along with some specific features which demonstrate how the company implements these.
This analysis includes:
AI principles - what are the company’s AI principles? This can include principles that have been explicitly shared in press releases or blog posts or wider technical principles that underpin the decisions of product teams in the companies featured. We’ll analyse some of the key trends and commonalities between some of the companies which you can use to inform your own product’s AI principles and strategy.
Features - what AI features has the company released and how do these AI principles relate to those features? We’ll use this as an opportunity to bring you up to speed with some of the latest AI features released by top companies - but also understand how these align with the company’s principles.
Technologies - what AI technologies does the company use to bring their AI principles to life? This can include one or more from a selection of AI technologies like generative AI, machine learning, LLMs, NLP and proprietary / foundational AI models.
Links to examples and principles - for each product featured we’ve included direct links to the principles and the features which use those principles.
The companies featured in full along with their AI principles in practice is available at the end of the post.
Companies deep dive
But before we get to the list in full, let’s take a closer look at some of the companies featured, starting with Figma.
Figma
Figma recently found itself at the center of a backlash after it was revealed that its new AI feature was inadvertently creating designs that looked a lot like Apple’s. Their CEO eventually hit the pause button on the AI feature in question, but the whole episode put Figma - and its AI principles - firmly in the spotlight.