You only need two simple letters to accurately convey the major shift in the technology space this year: A and I. Beyond those letters, however, is a complex, evolving and exciting way in which we work, communicate and collaborate. As you will see, artificial intelligence is a common thread as we embark on Microsoft Build, our annual flagship event for developers.
It’s already been a landmark year for the industry, starting in January with the announcement of an extension of our partnership with OpenAI to accelerate AI breakthroughs and to ensure these benefits are broadly shared with the world. And in February, Microsoft announced an all-new, AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser to transform the largest software category in the world – search.
Since then, developments have accelerated at a rapid pace, with several key milestones along the way, including:
- Greater availability of Azure OpenAI Service with added support for ChatGPT and OpenAI’s groundbreaking GPT-4 model.
- Copilots across a wide range of users, including Dynamics 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot for Power Platform.
- Expansion of a new AI-powered Bing to the Windows 11 taskbar, mobile and Skype; Bing Image Creator to chat; and a full open preview of the platform, no waitlist required.
This is just the beginning of the new era of AI. That’s why Microsoft Build is so important. During this event, we’ll be showcasing how AI is redefining what and how developers build, as well as how AI is changing the future of work.
Before we get into the news, let’s talk about two concepts we are discussing at length during Microsoft Build: copilots and plugins.
A copilot is an application that uses modern AI and large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 to assist people with complex tasks. Microsoft first introduced the concept of a copilot nearly two years ago with GitHub Copilot, an AI pair programmer that assists developers with writing code, and we continue to release copilots across many of the company’s core businesses.
We believe the copilot represents both a new paradigm in AI-powered software and a profound shift in the way that software is built – from imagining new product scenarios, to the user experience, the architecture, the services that it uses and how to think about safety and security.
Plugins are tools first introduced for ChatGPT, and more recently Bing, which augment the capabilities of AI systems, enabling them to interact with application programming interfaces (APIs) from other software and services to retrieve real-time information, incorporate company and other business data, perform new types of computations and safely take action on the user’s behalf. Think of plugins as the connection between copilots and the rest of the digital world.
With that said, let’s focus on the news and announcements we’re unveiling during Microsoft Build.
Growing the AI plugin ecosystem
Microsoft is announcing that we will adopt the same open plugin standard that OpenAI introduced for ChatGPT, enabling interoperability across ChatGPT and the breadth of Microsoft’s copilot offerings.
Developers can now use one platform to build plugins that work across both consumer and business surfaces, including ChatGPT, Bing, Dynamics 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot.
And if you want to develop and use your own plugins with your AI application built on Azure OpenAI Service, it will, by default, be interoperable with this same plugin standard. This means developers can build experiences that enable people to interact with their apps using the most natural user interface: the human language.
As part of this shared plugin platform, Bing is adding to its support for plugins. In addition to previously announced plugins for OpenTable and Wolfram Alpha, we will also have Expedia, Instacart, Kayak, Klarna, Redfin and Zillow, among many others in the Bing ecosystem.
In addition to the common plugin platform, Microsoft is announcing that Bing is coming to ChatGPT as the default search experience. ChatGPT will now have a world-class search engine built-in to provide more up-to-date answers with access from the web. Now, answers are grounded by search and web data and include citations so users can learn more, all directly from within chat. The new experience is rolling out to ChatGPT Plus subscribers starting today and will be available to free users soon by simply enabling a plugin.
Developers can now extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with plugins
We’re also announcing that developers can now integrate their apps and services into Microsoft 365 Copilot with plugins.
Plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot include ChatGPT and Bing plugins, as well as Teams message extensions and Power Platform connectors – enabling developers to leverage their existing investments. And developers will be able to easily build new plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot with the Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio. Developers can also extend Microsoft 365 Copilot by bringing their data into the Microsoft Graph, contextualizing relevant and actionable information with the recently announced Semantic Index for Copilot.
More than 50 plugins from partners will be available for customers as part of the early access program, including Atlassian, Adobe, ServiceNow, Thomson Reuters, Moveworks and Mural, with thousands more available by the general availability of Microsoft 365 Copilot.
New Azure AI tooling to help developers build, operationalize deploy their own next-generation AI apps
It starts with our new Azure AI Studio. We’re making it simple to integrate external data sources into Azure OpenAI Service. In addition, we’re excited to introduce Azure Machine Learning prompt flow to make it easier for developers to construct prompts while taking advantage of popular open-source prompt orchestration solutions like Semantic Kernel.
In Azure OpenAI Service, which brings together advanced models including ChatGPT and GPT-4, with the enterprise capabilities of Azure, we’re announcing updates to enable developers to deploy the most cutting-edge AI models using their own data; a Provisioned Throughput SKU that offers dedicated capacity; and plugins that simplify integrating other external data sources into a customer’s use of Azure OpenAI Service. We now have more than 4,500 customers using Azure OpenAI Service.
Building responsibly together
At Microsoft, we’ve been committed to developing AI technology that has a beneficial impact and earns trust, while also sharing our own learnings and building new tools and innovations that help developers and businesses implement responsible AI practices in their own work and organizations. At Build, we’re introducing several new updates, including Azure AI Content Safety, a new Azure AI service to help businesses create safer online environments and communities. As part of Microsoft’s commitment to building responsible AI systems, Azure AI Content Safety will be integrated across Microsoft products, including Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Machine Learning.
We’re also introducing new tools to Azure Machine Learning, including expanding Responsible AI dashboard support for text and image data, in preview, enabling users to evaluate large models built with unstructured data during the model building, training and/or evaluation stage. This helps users identify model errors, fairness issues and model explanations before models are deployed, for more performant and fair computer vision and natural language processing (NLP) models. And prompt flow, in preview soon, provides a streamlined experience for prompting, evaluating and tuning large language models. Users can quickly create prompt workflows that connect to various language models and data sources and assess the quality of their workflows with measurements such as groundedness to choose the best prompt for their use case. Prompt flow also integrates Azure AI Content Safety to help users detect and remove harmful content directly in their flow of work.
In addition, Microsoft announced new media provenance capabilities coming to Microsoft Designer and Bing Image Creator in the coming months that will enable users to verify whether an image or video was generated by AI. The technology uses cryptographic methods to mark and sign AI-generated content with metadata about its origin.
Introducing Microsoft Fabric, a new unified platform for analytics
Today’s world is awash with data, constantly streaming from the devices we use, the applications we build and the interactions we have.And now, as we enter a new era defined by AI, this data is becoming even more important.Powering organization-specific AI experiences requires a constant supply of clean data from a well-managed and highly integrated analytics system. But most organizations’ analytics systems are a labyrinth of specialized and disconnected services.
Microsoft Fabric is a unified platform for analytics that includes data engineering, data integration, data warehousing, data science, real-time analytics, applied observability and business intelligence, all connected to a single data repository called OneLake.
It enables customers of all technical levels to experience capabilities in a single, unified experience. It is infused with Azure OpenAI Service at every layer to help customers unlock the full potential of their data, enabling developers to leverage the power of generative AI to find insights in their data.
With Copilot in Microsoft Fabric in every data experience, customers can use conversational language to create dataflows and data pipelines, generate code and entire functions, build machine learning models or visualize results. Customers can even create their own conversational language experiences that combine Azure OpenAI Service models and their data and publish them as plugins.
Accelerating an AI-powered future through partners
Our customers benefit from our partner collaborations, such as with NVIDIA, that enable organizations to design, develop, deploy and manage applications with the scale and security of Azure. NVIDIA will accelerate enterprise-ready generative AI with NVIDIA AI Enterprise Integration with Azure Machine Learning. Omniverse Cloud, only available on Azure, enables organizations to aggregate data into massive, high-performance models, connect their domain-specific software tools and enable multi-user live collaboration across factory locations. NVIDIA GPUs leveraging ONNX Runtime & Olive toolchain will support the implementation of accelerating AI models without needing a deeper knowledge of the hardware.
New capabilities for Microsoft Dev Box
Microsoft Dev Box, an Azure service that gives developers access to ready-to-code, project-specific dev boxes that are preconfigured and centrally managed, is introducing several new capabilities to enhance the developer experience and boost productivity. While in preview, we’ve seen many customers experimenting with Dev Box, and we’ve migrated more than 9,000 developers internally to the service for day-to-day software development.
Now, we’ve added additional features and capabilities, including customization using configuration-as-code and new starter developer images in Azure Marketplace that provide dev teams with ready-to-use images that can be customized further for specific dev team needs.Additionally, developers can now manage custom environments from a specialized developer portal, Azure Deployment Environments. Dev Box general availability will begin in July.
Unveiling a new home for developers on Windows 11 with Dev Home
Dev Home will launch at Microsoft Build in preview as a new Windows experience developers can get from the Microsoft Store.
Dev Home makes it easy to connect to GitHub and configure cloud development environments like Microsoft Dev Box and GitHub Codespaces.Dev Home is open source and fully extensible, enabling developers to enhance their experience with a customizable dashboard and the tools they need to be successful.
Introducing Windows Copilot for Windows 11
Last fall at our Windows and Surface launch, Chief Product Officer Panos Panay talked about the power of AI to unlock new interaction models on the PC with Windows Studio Effects and DALL-E 2 in Microsoft Designer, and at CES he talked about how AI is going to reinvent the way people get things done on Windows.
This brings us to Windows Copilot.
Windows will be the first PC platform to centralize AI assistance with the introduction of Windows Copilot. Together, with Bing Chat and first- and third-party plugins, users can focus on bringing their ideas to life, completing complex projects and collaborating instead of spending energy finding, launching and working across multiple applications.
This builds on the integration we released into Windows 11 back in February that brought the new AI-powered Bing to the taskbar.
A preview of Windows Copilot will start to become available for Windows 11 in June.
As you can see, it’s going to be a busy time at Microsoft Build. To give you a sense of what developers are going to experience at the event, we’re expecting approximately 200,000 registered attendees, with 350 sessions and more than 125 hours of content over two days. In total, we’ll announce more than 50 new products and features.
For more information, make sure to watch keynotes on demand from Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, Kevin Scott and Scott Guthrie on Day 1. On Day 2, watch the keynotes anchored by Rajesh Jha and Panos Panay. Additionally, you can explore all the news and announcements in the Book of News and read more stories and news about products from Microsoft Build here:
RELATED:
Watch Microsoft Build keynotes and view videos and photos
Microsoft outlines framework for building AI apps and copilots; expands AI plugin ecosystem
Bing at Microsoft Build 2023: Continuing the Transformation of Search
Empowering every developer with plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot
Build next-generation, AI-powered applications on Microsoft Azure
Introducing Microsoft Fabric: Data analytics for the era of AI
Tags: AI, Azure AI Content Safety, Azure OpenAI Service, Bing, copilots, developers, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Microsoft Build, plugins, Windows 11
FAQs
Which Azure tool can help you build artificial intelligence AI applications answer? ›
Azure Kubernetes Service Edge Essentials is an on-premises Kubernetes implementation of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) that automates running containerized applications at scale.
What is Microsoft build 2023? ›At Microsoft Build 2023—an event for developers by developers—we're going to announce exciting new features and technologies, share ideas, and help everyone boost their skills so we can all build a more secure future together.
What is Microsoft doing with AI? ›Microsoft AI, powered by Azure, provides billions of intelligent experiences every day in Windows, Xbox, Microsoft 365, Teams, Azure AI, Power Platform, Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Defender. Our AI tools and technologies are designed to benefit everyone at every level in every organization.
Is Microsoft developing AI? ›April 18 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT. O) is developing its own artificial intelligence chip code-named "Athena" that will power the technology behind AI chatbots like ChatGPT, the Information reported on Tuesday, citing two people familiar with the matter.
Which Azure cognitive services can you use to build conversation AI solutions? ›Azure Applied AI Services
Combine the AI models from Azure Cognitive Services with task-specific AI, built-in business logic, programming, orchestration, and customization to bring you ready-to-deploy AI solutions.
Is Azure Fundamentals worth it? A Certification in Microsoft Azure Fundamentals is valuable for those who want to acquire or prove foundational knowledge of cloud services and Azure functions. Benefits of earning an Azure Fundamentals Certification include: In-demand skills.
Where is Microsoft build 2023? ›It's all happening live at The Summit, 900 Pine Street in Seattle, May 23–25, 2023 PDT. Agenda is subject to change.
What are the changes to Microsoft 365 2023? ›Changes to cloud storage
Starting February 1, 2023, cloud storage used across Microsoft 365 apps and services will include Outlook.com attachments data and OneDrive data. All data will continue to be protected with Microsoft's comprehensive set of security features.
What's the cost to attend? Digital attendance at Microsoft Build is free and at no cost. The Seattle in-person attendee registration fee is $1,525 USD. In-person attendees can choose to add a Pre-day workshop to their registration for an additional fee of $225 USD.
What is Microsoft's new AI? ›Copilot is a modern AI assistant that will help Microsoft 365 users create Office documents. By Tom Warren, a senior editor covering Microsoft, PC gaming, console, and tech.
Who is Microsoft partner to build massive AI? ›
Cloud computing: Microsoft and Nvidia are building a 'massive' AI supercomputer. Here's why. The partnership makes Microsoft Azure the first public cloud to incorporate Nvidia's full AI stack -- its GPUs, networking, and AI software.
What is the Microsoft version of AI? ›Copilot, Microsoft's generative AI assistant, is reaching to all parts of the company's 365 services and is now coming to the Edge sidebar to help you through tasks.
Is AI replacing developers? ›While AI is currently being used to improve software engineering, many people fear that it could eventually replace human developers altogether. But is this really the case? The truth is that AI is unlikely to replace high-value software engineers who build complex and innovative software.
Is Elon Musk building an AI? ›startup to compete with OpenAI, which he cofounded. Tesla CEO Elon Musk is working to launch an artificial intelligence firm to rival OpenAI, the Financial Times reported. Musk has reportedly acquired thousands of Nvidia GPUs and has been recruiting AI researchers and engineers.
Will AI replace creativity? ›While AI can automate many tasks, it cannot replace the human experience of creativity and emotion, at least not yet. Therefore, it is important to view AI as a tool that can assist and augment human creativity and workmanship rather than a replacement for it.
What are three Microsoft guiding principles for responsible AI? ›Microsoft AI guiding principles
At Microsoft, we've recognized six principles that we believe should guide AI development and use: fairness, reliability and safety, privacy and security, inclusiveness, transparency, and accountability.
Chatbots can understand natural human language, emulate human conversation, and run simple, automated tasks. In addition, AI chatbots use predictive intelligence and analytics to learn a user's preferences and use this knowledge to provide recommendations and anticipate needs.
Which statement is an example of a Microsoft responsible AI principles? ›This is an example of which Microsoft guiding principle for responsible AI? Inclusiveness: At Microsoft, we firmly believe everyone should benefit from intelligent technology, meaning it must incorporate and address a broad range of human needs and experiences.
Is AI better than cloud computing? ›Seamless data access and data management
AI is all about leveraging data from different sources to make more intelligent business decisions. Cloud computing, on the other hand, unlike on-premise data storage, can hold significant quantities of data.
Cloud computing has already influenced the market of technology to a bigger extent. However, recent developments in different technologies i.e. Artificial Intelligence (AI) and increasing challenges/problems faced by the programmers in the cloud computing era will bring more and more changes.
Are Microsoft certifications worth it 2023? ›
Azure certifications are worth the effort in 2023. Microsoft's cloud platform is growing in popularity, and demand for Azure-certified professionals is high. Earning an Azure certification will demonstrate your expertise in this rapidly growing area and could lead to career growth opportunities.
Where did Bill Gates build Microsoft? ›Microsoft is a multinational computer technology corporation. Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Is Microsoft phasing out Office? ›Is Office going away entirely? No, as part of Microsoft 365 you will continue to get access to apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook. We will also continue to offer one-time purchases of those apps to consumers and businesses via Office 2021 and Office LTSC plans.
When did Microsoft move to China? ›Microsoft has had a presence in China for more than 20 years, entering the market in 1992.
Will Office 365 expire? ›Does Office 365 expire? Yes, Office 365 does expire if you don't renew your subscription. If you don't renew your subscription, you will lose access to all the Office apps and services that are included in your subscription. This includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more.
Will Microsoft 365 expire? ›Check your expiration status
Go to your Services & subscriptions page. If prompted, choose Sign in and enter the Microsoft account email and password associated with your Microsoft 365 subscription. Review the details under the Services & Subscriptions heading.
In October 2022, Microsoft announced that it would discontinue the "Microsoft Office" brand by January 2023, with most of its products and online productivity services being marketed primarily under the "Microsoft 365" brand.
How many people attended Microsoft Build? ›| Microsoft Build | |
|---|---|
| Founded | September 2011 |
| Most recent | May 24–26, 2022 (Online only) |
| Participants | 5,000 |
| Organized by | Microsoft |
As a program member, you can get a free Microsoft 365 developer subscription with 25 user licenses to use to build your solutions. This subscription will remain active for as long as you're actively developing and deploying solutions.
Is Microsoft Build virtual? ›Register at the Microsoft Build website and catch the content live in person in Seattle, WA, online live or online on-demand.
What is Google's AI called? ›
That is the Shakespearean question an Associated Press reporter sought to answer while testing out Google's artificially intelligent chatbot. The recently rolled-out bot dubbed Bard is the internet search giant's answer to the ChatGPT tool that Microsoft has been melding into its Bing search engine and other software.
Which AI company is owned by Microsoft? ›Microsoft announced a new multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment with the artificial intelligence lab OpenAI.
What is the new AI everyone is using? ›The current wave of AI products is built on a technical breakthrough called generative AI. It allows a computer to create images or words that look like they might have been made by a human. It does this by studying zillions of pictures and text samples, often scraped from the web.
Who owns the most advanced AI? ›- GPT-3 (OpenAI) The first in our list is GPT-3 short for Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 is the third series of generative language models developed by OpenAI. ...
- AlphaGo (Google DeepMind) ...
- Watson (IBM) ...
- Sophia (Hanson Robotics) ...
- Tesla Autopilot (Tesla Inc)
Inspired by the January cover of Popular Electronics magazine, friends Bill Gates and Paul Allen started Microsoft – sometimes Micro-Soft, for microprocessors and software – to develop software for the Altair 8800, an early personal computer.
Is Microsoft build in person? ›Microsoft Build is back, and this time, it's taking place both digitally and in person from Seattle, Washington.
Is Microsoft AI course free? ›If you're looking for a free introductory AI course for beginner's, Microsoft has got you covered.
Does Microsoft have an AI assistant? ›Windows Copilot, Microsoft's latest AI assistant, can access information from Bing Chat, Bing search data, and context across Windows 11 apps.
Why is Microsoft AI Cortana? ›The name Cortana comes from Microsoft's flagship game series Halo. The series, originally developed by Bungie and then 343 Industries, features an artificial intelligence (AI) character of the same name from the 26th century.
Is programming in danger of AI? ›In conclusion, the rise of AI presents a major threat to the future of programming jobs. Machines are becoming better and better at performing routine and repetitive tasks, and this will reduce the need for human programmers in many areas.
Why AI won't replace programmers? ›
Programming is About Understanding Complex Systems
While AI can learn syntax and automate some programming tasks, it cannot replace the essential skills of a programmer. Understanding and managing complex systems require human expertise and experience.
Trade jobs like plumbers, electricians, and HVAC technicians are not going to be replaced by AI. For example, a plumber needs to visit sites to install plumbing or fix pipes.
What AI company is Elon Musk investing in? ›Musk was recently reported to be starting his own AI-focused company by the Financial Times. The billionaire was named as a director in a business-incorporation document filed in March for a new company called X.ai Corp.
What is Elon Musk's new AI company called? ›Elon Musk has created a new artificial intelligence company called X.AI Corp. that is incorporated in Nevada, according to a state filing. Mr. Musk is the only listed director of the company, and Jared Birchall, the director of Mr.
What is Elon Musk AI company called? ›Now, Elon Musk has stepped into the game by launching his own AI company. Elon Musk has created a new artificial intelligence company called X AI that is incorporated in Nevada.
Will AI replace digital art? ›“No, AI apps are unlikely to replace artists. While AI technology has made significant progress in generating visual and audio content, it still lacks the creativity and human touch that is intrinsic to art.
Can AI eventually replace human jobs? ›Artificial intelligence cannot replace human talent and creativity, it can only mimic the human brain. The algorithms designed for machine learning (ML) must be taught how to perform their assigned tasks. This requires a large number of human resources which will only continue to multiply in the near future.
Is AI going to replace everything? ›AI won't entirely replace humans any time soon, industry experts and companies investing in the technology say. But jobs are transforming as AI becomes more accessible.
Which is your tool can help you build artificial intelligence applications? ›- Scikit Learn.
- TensorFlow.
- PyTorch.
- CNTK.
- Caffe.
- Apache MXNet.
- Keras.
- OpenNN.
Some of the most important tools and frameworks are: Scikit Learn. TensorFlow. Theano.
Which of the following is Azure artificial intelligence service? ›
Microsoft Azure AI is a robust framework for developing AI solutions in conversational AI, machine learning, data sciences, robotics, IoT, and more. Microsoft enables you to leverage data wherever it is.
What is Azure AI Builder? ›AI Builder is the platform for providing a low-code user experience for every developer to create and customize their PowerApps and Flows.
What is the AI tool for questions and answers? ›iAsk.Ai (i Ask AI) is an advanced free AI search engine that enables users to Ask AI any question, and receive an Instant, Accurate, and Factual Answer without ever storing individual searches.
Which is a simplified tool to build intelligent artificial intelligence applications? ›Answer is Azure Cognitive Services.
The catalog of services within Azure Cognitive Services can be categorized into five main pillars - Vision, Speech, Language, Web Search, and Decision. Simplified, it can be used as a tool to build intelligent AI applications. A company is planning on moving to Microsoft Azure.
Which of the following is part of the Azure Artificial Intelligence service? Azure Machine Learning service. Machine Learning service provides a cloud-based environment that you can use to develop, train, test, deploy, manage, and track machine learning models.
What is the best AI tool? ›- Pictory. Pictory is an AI video generator that enables you to easily create and edit high-quality videos. ...
- Jasper. ...
- Murf. ...
- HitPaw Photo Enhancer. ...
- Flick. ...
- Lovo.ai. ...
- Fireflies. ...
- Tidio.
Artificial intelligence (AI) makes it possible for machines to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs and perform human-like tasks. Most AI examples that you hear about today – from chess-playing computers to self-driving cars – rely heavily on deep learning and natural language processing.
What is most commonly used for AI? ›Python and Java are both languages that are widely used for AI. The choice between the programming languages depends on how you plan to implement AI. For example, in the case of data analysis, you would probably go with Python.
What is Google AI called? ›Google AI, formerly known as Google Research, is Google's artificial intelligence (AI) research and development branch for its AI applications.
What is Microsoft Azure machine learning? ›Azure Machine Learning is a cloud service for accelerating and managing the machine learning project lifecycle. Machine learning professionals, data scientists, and engineers can use it in their day-to-day workflows: Train and deploy models, and manage MLOps.
Why is Python commonly used for in artificial intelligence AI environments? ›
Python is the major code language for AI and ML. It surpasses Java in popularity and has many advantages, such as a great library ecosystem, Good visualization options, A low entry barrier, Community support, Flexibility, Readability, and Platform independence.
What is AI builder built on? ›Because AI Builder is built on top of Azure AI capabilities—and uses your data in Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Dataverse—you're able to train and build no-code models to enhance the intelligence of your business apps.
Is Microsoft AI Builder free? ›AI Builder features that are in preview release status are free to use. You don't need to obtain a license to use AI Builder preview features.
What does AI builder stand for? ›AI Builder provides you with the ability to optimise your business processes using artificial intelligence (AI). You can use AI to automate processes and gain insights from your data in Power Apps and Power Automate.