Microsoft is boosting developer communities across the region to create and deliver the next generation of differentiated Artificial Intelligence (AI) experiences with a host of new product launches and feature updates to its portfolio of AI solutions announced at the Build 2024 conference.
According to Industry sources, the latest updates across Microsoft’s Azure AI Services include Azure AI Studio now being generally available as a key component of the Microsoft Copilot stack. In addition, GPT-4o, OpenAI’s latest flagship model, is now available in Azure AI Studio and as an API. This groundbreaking multimodal model integrates text, images, and audio processing to set a new standard for generative and conversational AI experiences.
Industry sources also added 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 preview in Azure. Microsoft is also boosting developers to get the most of their data and make more informed decisions through updates in Microsoft Fabric. Real-Time Intelligence, currently in preview, within Microsoft Fabric, is designed to empower everyday analysts with simple low-code/no-code experiences, as well as pro developers with code-rich user interfaces to act on high volume, time-sensitive and highly granular data in a proactive and timely fashion.
Industry sources also added that the Microsoft Fabric Workload Development Kit, is a set of tools designed to extend applications within Fabric, creating a unified user experience for developers and independent software vendors (ISVs).
Frank X. Shaw, Chief Communications Officer at Microsoft, stated: “Since it was first released, Copilot has emerged as a game-changer for many people and organizations across industries, empowering them to improve their efficiency, enhance customer experiences, and tackle complex tasks. 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. And now, as we enter a new phase of innovation where Copilot begins to take more action on behalf of individuals and teams, we are introducing a number of expansions and capabilities to further empower developers to create highly intelligent Copilots that are tailored to their unique and individual needs.”
Industry sources further added that as a part of Microsoft’s mission to aid professionals to spend less time on mundane and repetitive tasks and instead focus on more strategic and fulfilling work, the firm has also unveiled a series of updates and features to its Copilot stack, commencing with Team Copilot. The solution expands Copilot for Microsoft 365 from a behind-the-scenes personal AI assistant to work on behalf of a team, greatly improving collaboration and project management. New capabilities in Microsoft Copilot Studio have also been introduced to support developers in building custom copilots that act as agents that can respond proactively to specific data and events.
GitHub is also introducing the first set of GitHub Copilot extensions, developed by Microsoft and third-party partners, in private preview to allow developers to customize their GitHub Copilot experience with their preferred services like Azure, Docker, Sentry, and more directly within GitHub Copilot Chat.
Industry sources also added that to ensure that developers can run demanding AI and high-performance computing (HPC) workloads like Azure OpenAI Service, a new Cobalt 100 Arm-based virtual machine (VM), based on Microsoft’s custom silicon series announced in November 2023, is now in preview, and the new Azure ND MI300X v5 VM is now generally available. These announcements build on Microsoft’s earlier launch of Copilot+ PCs, a new category of intelligent Windows PCs designed exclusively for AI. With powerful latest silicon capable of 40+ trillion operations per second (TOPS), all-day battery life, and access to the large language models (LLMs) running in Microsoft Azure Cloud in concert with small language models (SLMs), Copilot+ PCs can achieve a level of performance never seen before.
