The Telegraph My details My newsletters Logout Upgrade to Premium My details My newsletters Logout The Telegraph Minecraft becomes testbed for artificial intelligence experiments its artificial intelligence technology Credit: Microsoft 14 March 2016 • 11:12am Minecraft is going to be a testbed for artificial intelligence (AI) experiments. Microsoft, who owns the hugely popular world-building game, revealed it will train an AI program to play Minecraft, which is more "sophisticated" than current AI research simulations. -- "You can do survival mode, you can do 'build battles' with your friends, you can do courses, you can implement our own games. "This is really exciting for artificial intelligence because it allows us to create games that stretch beyond current abilities. " Minecraft and artificial intelligence Credit: Microsoft The new research is the latest step in Microsoft's plan to heavily invest in AI. It recently purchased British startup SwiftKey, a predictive typing app that uses AI to guess users'e next word, for £174 million.