Microsoft is not the only tech behemoth trying to commoditize and disseminate its AI work. IBM’s Watson AI system has had an ever-expanding API library that developers can apply to use for about a year, and earlier this week, Google announced that it was open-sourcing the artificial intelligence work behind its search engine.

The reason for the releases, it seems, is twofold: AI is likely to become one of the main uses for computing in the near future, and letting other people build on research can help spur more innovation. Commercial licensing of the APIs can also provide new ways to make money—something that Google has perfected with its Maps, search and countless other API projects.

While the emotional outputs might not yet be entirely accurate, Microsoft said in a blog post that these systems are machine learning-based, meaning they will get smarter the more data are fed into them. So perhaps in the near future, when a Microsoft-powered AI robot strolls into our living room and sees us sitting there in a huff, it’ll know to leave us alone.

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