Groundbreaking advances in AI are having a profound impact on Microsoft and on the developers using our technology to improve efficiency, enhance customer experiences and make new breakthroughs.
Over the past year, we’ve built Microsoft Copilot and released more than 150 updates to it, and we’ve developed the Copilot stack, which takes everything we’ve learned so far and lets developers build their own copilots.
In addition, over the past two years, GitHub Copilot has become the most widely adopted AI developer tool, with 1.8 million paid subscribers.
And just a day ago, we introduced a new category of Copilot+ PCs, the fastest, most AI-ready PCs ever built.
We are the industry leader in AI, and that’s why, as we begin our flagship event for developers, Microsoft Build, there’s one question on everyone’s mind: What’s next?
On Monday, we introduced the world to a new class of Windows PCs, Copilot+ PCs. These devices are designed to allow developers to deliver differentiated AI experiences on the edge, and, together with the great features that we are announcing at Build, make Windows the most open platform for AI and the best place for developers.
At Build, we also are announcing further branches of this technology revolution, including:
- How Microsoft Fabric is helping developers and customers leverage data in motion, or digital information being transported within or between computer systems, to build intelligent apps.
- New frontier models that allow developers to explore multimodal capabilities supporting text, images, video and other types of data in their AI applications, evolving beyond text prompts and completions.
- Partnerships that show how AI can impact the future of myriad industries, including education.
- And how an open and flexible cloud-based platform, built on a foundation of safe and responsible AI, can help developers innovate.
Microsoft Build is always an exciting time for us. About 200,000 people have registered to join us for three days of technical learning and community connection, with 4,000 attending in person in Seattle. Attendees can choose from more than 300 sessions, demos and expert and instructor-led labs from Microsoft and our partners. For those not able to attend the live event, most content will be available on demand. In total, we are announcing about 60 new products and solutions at the event.
With that introduction to Build in mind, let’s explore some of the news and announcements.
In-the-moment decision making with Real-Time Intelligence
For the most efficient AI apps, businesses need to be able to qualify, analyze and organize data at ingestion. This has proven to be a difficult step. The new Real-Time Intelligence within Microsoft Fabric provides an end-to-end Software as a Service (SaaS) solution that empowers customers to act on high-volume, time-sensitive and highly granular data to make faster and more informed business decisions.
Real-Time Intelligence, now in preview, can be helpful for analysts with simple low/no-code experiences, and it also can benefit pro developers with code-rich user interfaces. For example, racing team Dener Motorsport has been using Microsoft Fabric to support real-time analytics, storage and reporting, enabling them to sustain optimal performance and maintain the cars in good repair, which can keep drivers safer. Dener plans to use Real-Time Intelligence as part of their winning strategy to gain insights at ingestion during races.
Building apps requires a level of flexibility, customization and efficiency to make it feasible for developers. The new Microsoft Fabric Workload Development Kit makes this possible by enabling independent software vendors (ISVs) and developers to extend applications within Fabric, creating a unified user experience.
GitHub Copilot experience leans into extensibility
GitHub is introducing the first set of GitHub Copilot extensions, developed by Microsoft and third-party partners, in private preview. These additions allow developers and organizations to customize their GitHub Copilot experience with their preferred services like Azure, Docker, Sentry and more directly within GitHub Copilot Chat.
GitHub Copilot for Azure, one of the extensions from Microsoft, showcases how building in natural language with a broader range of capabilities can propel development velocity. Using the extension through Copilot Chat, developers can explore and manage Azure resources, while also troubleshooting issues and locating relevant logs and code.
New frontier models and multimodal capabilities in Azure AI
GPT-4o, OpenAI’s newest flagship model, is now available in Azure AI Studio and as an API. This groundbreaking multimodal model integrates text, image and audio processing to set a new standard for generative and conversational AI experiences.
We also announced that Phi-3-vision, a new multimodal model in the Phi-3 family of AI small language models (SLMs) developed by Microsoft, is now available in Azure. Phi-3 models are powerful, cost-effective and optimized for personal devices. Phi-3-vision offers the ability to input images and text and receive text responses. For example, users can ask questions about a chart or ask an open-ended question about specific images.
Developers can experiment with these state-of-the-art frontier models in the Azure AI Playground, and they can start building with and customizing with the models in Azure AI Studio.
Microsoft, Khan Academy using AI to empower educators
Microsoft and Khan Academy are announcing a multi-faceted partnership to turn the transformative potential of AI into reality.
To start, Microsoft is enabling Khan Academy to offer all K-12 U.S. educators free access to Khanmigo for Teachers, an AI-powered teaching assistant that frees up teachers’ time so they can focus on what matters most – engaging with and supporting their students. Microsoft is donating access to Azure AI-optimized infrastructure to increase the availability of Khanmigo for Teachers, which will now be powered by Azure OpenAI Service.
Khan Academy is collaborating with Microsoft to explore opportunities to improve math tutoring in an affordable, scalable and adaptable manner with a new version of Phi-3, a family of SLMs developed by Microsoft. They also plan to bring more Khan Academy content into Copilot and Teams for Education, expanding resources for learners.
New partnership with Cognition AI
Microsoft and Cognition will bring Cognition’s autonomous AI software agent, Devin, to customers to help them with complex tasks such as code migration and modernization projects. As part of the agreement, Devin will be powered by Azure. Cognition AI is an applied AI lab building end-to-end software agents to help developers achieve more.
Powerful new virtual machines help fuel AI adoption
Microsoft has a unique systems approach to AI infrastructure, which includes hardware and software from Microsoft and our partners, all optimized to run AI workloads at scale and fine-tuned for customer needs. We are the first cloud provider to bring AMD’s leading MI300X AI accelerator chip to power customers’ AI training and inferencing needs, with the general availability of the Azure ND MI300X v5 virtual machine series optimized for demanding AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads like Azure OpenAI Service.
Following the launch of Azure Cobalt 100, Microsoft’s first custom-designed compute processor, the company is announcing a preview of new Cobalt 100 Arm-based virtual machines (VMs), based on the company’s custom silicon series announced in November 2023. Cobalt 100 Arm-based VMs are the first generation of VMs to feature Microsoft’s new Cobalt processor, custom-built on an Arm architecture, and optimized for efficiency and performance when running general-purpose and cloud-native workloads. Customers can expect up to 40% improved performance compared to comparable Azure VMs.
The evolution of Copilot
Copilot has been a game-changer for many people since it was first released. Using modern AI and large language models (LLMs) like Open AI’s GPT-4, copilots across Microsoft products have assisted people with complex tasks, serving as a personal, behind-the-scenes AI assistant.
Now, we are introducing Team Copilot, the expansion of Copilot for Microsoft 365 from a behind-the-scenes, personal AI assistant to a new, valuable member of your team. You will be able to invoke Copilot where you collaborate – in Teams, Loop, Planner and more. Team Copilot can be a meeting facilitator in meetings, managing the agenda, tracking time and taking notes. It can act as a collaborator in chats by surfacing important information, tracking action items and addressing unresolved issues. It can serve as a project manager to help ensure every project runs smoothly and notify the team when their input is needed. These initial experiences, coming in preview later this year, will enable us to learn, iterate and refine as we enter a new phase of innovation where Copilot begins to take more action on behalf of individuals and teams.
Microsoft Copilot Studio is introducing new agent capabilities, empowering developers to build copilots that can proactively respond to data and events, tailored to specific tasks and functions. Copilots built with this new category of capabilities can now independently manage complex, long-running business processes by leveraging memory and knowledge for context, reason over actions and inputs, learn based on user feedback and ask for help when they encounter situations that they don’t know how to handle. Users can now put Copilot to work for them – from IT device procurement to customer concierge for sales and service.
Copilot extensions, including plugins and connectors, allow customers to enhance Microsoft Copilot by connecting it to new data sources and applications, expanding its functionality.
We’re excited about these announcements and all the other updates and features being unveiled at Build. For more information, today you can watch keynotes from Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, Executive Vice President of Experiences and Devices Rajesh Jha and Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott.
On Wednesday, you can watch keynotes from Executive Vice President of Cloud and AI Scott Guthrie and friends. Additionally, you can explore all the news and announcements in the Book of News.
RELATED LINKS:
Watch Microsoft Build keynotes and view photos and videos
Khan Academy and Microsoft announce partnership, Copilot integration
Copilot Studio empowering next wave of copilot experiences
Azure ND MI300X V5 series now generally available
Extend and customize Microsoft Copilot with Copilot extensions
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