Microsoft Releases MAI Models, Google Ships Gemma 4
Microsoft and Google both announced new AI model releases on April 2, 2026. Microsoft introduced three MAI models—MAI-Transcribe-1, MAI-Voice-1, and MAI-Image-2—available only via Azure Foundry and a US-only MAI Playground. Google released Gemma 4 under an Apache 2.0 license, offering four variants (including 26B and 31B) that run locally or offline and are downloadable from Hugging Face, Kaggle, and Ollama.
Key Points
- 1Launches three MAI models: MAI-Transcribe-1, MAI-Voice-1, and MAI-Image-2 for Azure
- 2Limits access via Azure Foundry and US-only MAI Playground, restricting broader availability
- 3Enables local, offline deployment: Gemma 4 Apache 2.0 models downloadable from Hugging Face
Scoring Rationale
Official announcements from Microsoft and Google introduce significant new multimodal and local-run capabilities, notably Google’s Gemma 4 under Apache 2.0. Score slightly reduced because Microsoft’s MAI releases are cloud- and US-limited, which reduces immediate access for practitioners.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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