Microsoft has decided to open-source a platform used by its researchers to test artificial-intelligence projects.

The AIX platform, which is already being used by Microsoft Research and is available under a private beta to select academic researchers, allows researchers to use the unstructured play mode in the Minecraft game as a testing ground for their AI research.

AIX will also be made available this summer under an open-source license.

The announcement comes at a time when Google DeepMind is grabbing attention for the Go games being played by its AI program AlphaGo with a key Go player Lee Se-dol. AlphaGo won three straight games of the five-games match in Seoul but on Sunday lost to Lee.

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