At the Microsoft Build conference today, Microsoft announced several new AI products and partnerships, including AI enhancements for Github Copilot, new Frontier models in Azure, and a collaboration in the education sector. The company is also upgrading its cloud hardware.
Copilot as a team member
Microsoft is launching Team Copilot, an extension of Copilot for Microsoft 365 that transforms it from a personal AI assistant in the background to a valuable new team member. Team Copilot can act as a meeting leader, manage the agenda, keep track of time, and take notes, Microsoft says.
Video: Microsoft
Microsoft Copilot Studio introduces new agent capabilities that enable developers to create Copilots that proactively respond to data and events and are tailored to specific tasks and functions.
Copilot extensions, including plug-ins and connectors, allow customers to extend Microsoft Copilot by connecting to new data sources and applications to enhance its functionality.
For example, with the Github Copilot for Azure extension, developers can explore and manage Azure resources, solve problems, and find relevant logs and code. Docker and Sentry are also available directly in Copilot Chat.
New frontier models in Azure AI, Phi-3 Vision
GPT-4o, the latest flagship model from OpenAI, is now available in Azure AI Studio and via API. The multimodal model integrates text, image, and audio processing.
Phi-3-Vision, a new multimodal model in Microsoft's Phi-3 family of small language models, is now available on Azure. Phi-3 Vision can process input images and text and generate text responses. According to Microsoft, Phi-3 models are powerful, cost-effective, and optimized for mobile devices.
Microsoft partners with Khan Academy to bring AI to education
Microsoft and Khan Academy have announced a partnership that will enable Khan Academy to provide free access to Khanmigo, an AI-powered teaching assistant, to all K-12 teachers in the US.
Microsoft is providing access to infrastructure optimized for Azure AI. Khan Academy is also working with Microsoft to improve math education with a new version of Phi-3.
Azure gets hardware upgrades with AMD MI300X and Cobalt 100 VMs
Microsoft is bringing AMD's MI300X AI accelerator chip to the cloud, which the company says offers the best price/performance ratio for GPT-4 inference today. The Azure ND MI300X v5 VM series is now generally available.
Microsoft also announced a preview of new Cobalt 100-based VMs, which are based on Microsoft's first in-house processor line. Cobalt 100 VMs deliver up to 40 percent more performance than comparable Azure VMs, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft Fabric introduces Real-Time Intelligence for efficient data analysis
Microsoft Fabric Real-Time Intelligence is a new software-as-a-service solution that helps organizations efficiently qualify, analyze, and organize real-time data. Both analysts and developers can use the solution with low-code or code interfaces.
According to Microsoft, the Dener Motorsport racing team is already using Fabric for real-time analytics, storage, and reporting to optimize performance and ensure vehicle repairability. With real-time intelligence, the team aims to gain insights during races. The new Microsoft Fabric Workload Development Kit enables independent software vendors and developers to extend applications within Fabric.
