Google has made one of the most substantive changes to its AI principles since first publishing them in 2018. In a change spotted by The Washington Post, the search giant edited the document to remove pledges it had made promising it would not "design or deploy" AI tools for use in weapons or surveillance technology.

Google has revised its AI policies and removed a key promise that barred the use of artificial intelligence for developing weapons and surveillance tools. The development came just before Alphabet’s year-end financial report,