Microsoft Build Day 1: It’s All About AI

AI is a massive part of this year’s Microsoft Build and is being integrated across Microsoft’s breadth of products, including Windows 11.

May 24, 2023

Image of a Microsoft event, microsoft Build 2023 updates
  • AI is a massive part of this year’s Microsoft Build and is being integrated across Microsoft’s breadth of products, including Windows 11.
  • Microsoft released over 50 updates, including Windows Copilot, Bing Chat plugins, Azure AI Studio, the availability of the Copilot stack, and more.

Microsoft Build, the Windows maker’s annual developer conference, commenced yesterday. The company seems to have gotten a new lease on business following its investment in OpenAI, which is paying off in a big way.

It’s a no-brainer that artificial intelligence (AI) is a massive part of the event. The company is integrating AI into its products, both from a consumer-centric perspective and for developers alike.

During the first keynote, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella compared, “[A] thing I’ve always loved is [Steve] Jobs’ description of computers as bicycles for the mind. But then last November, we got an upgrade.”

“We went from the bicycle to the steam engine with the launch of ChatGPT. It was like a mosaic moment for this generation of the AI platform,” Nadella said.

Microsoft invested $1 billion in ChatGPT’s developer OpenAI in July 2019. ChatGPT became one of the fastest-growing platforms ever, leading to another $10 billion investment from Microsoft.

“It’s not like I came in on January 1 and said, ‘Let’s start doing press releases.’ But it does feel like that. It does feel like every week there’s something new and, you know, infusing this new AI stack across layers of it, right?” Nadella said during the first keynote.

“So we started with tooling in GitHub, or rather, Copilot in GitHub. We did Copilot in Power Platform, and when it comes to productivity, Copilot in Microsoft 365 and Copilot in Viva. With business processes, it’s Copilot in Dynamics 365.”

Nadella went on to highlight Security Copilot, AI for the web, Bing, Microsoft Edge, LinkedIn, Azure OpenAI APIs, and more. Subsequently, the company has more than 50 new updates for its users.

See More: Red Hat Summit 2023 — 5 Key Highlights From Day 1

The chief among them is the integration of AI into its latest flagship computer operating system. Windows Copilot is an AI assistant available on the taskbar in Windows 11. The tool can summarize text, control system settings, assist in search, and more.

Microsoft is also bringing the Bing search engine to ChatGPT. Being trained on GPT-3.5, a large language model released in March 2022, the chatbot’s answers can be a bit outdated, considering it also doesn’t source answers from the internet. Bing Chat integrated into ChatGPT could prove to be a game-changer for both companies.

More importantly, Microsoft is also making available first- and third-party plugins for Bing Chat which companies can use to integrate the AI web search tool into their respective products. What’s more, these plugins are built on the same standard as the one OpenAI introduced for ChatGPT.

This means Bing Chat plugins can work across Bing Chat — web, Microsoft Edge sidebar, ChatGPT, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Dynamics 365 Copilot, Windows Copilot, and possibly upcoming copilot-based products and services.

Microsoft Copilot Plugin Developers

Microsoft Copilot Plugin Developers

Source: Microsoft

Additionally, with the Azure AI Studio, developers could build intelligent AI apps or copilot for their applications. The Azure AI Studio is an enterprise-focused offering fully managed by Microsoft. More importantly, Azure AI Studio allows developer access to OpenAI’s models and use them on their internal or external data.

Microsoft is also making the entire Copilot stack available to developers. This includes Microsoft’s AI infrastructure, foundation models, AI orchestration, and common extensibility.

Some other products, services, and updates from Microsoft Build Day 1 include Azure AI Safety, Provisioned Throughput SKU for Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft Fabric (data analytics), and more.

Microsoft Build is a hybrid event this year and will continue through May 25, 2023. Stay tuned here for more updates.

What product announcement are you looking forward to? Share your thoughts with us on LinkedInOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , or FacebookOpens a new window . We’d love to hear from you!

Image source: Shutterstock

MORE ON TECH EVENTS

Sumeet Wadhwani
Sumeet Wadhwani

Asst. Editor, Spiceworks Ziff Davis

An earnest copywriter at heart, Sumeet is what you'd call a jack of all trades, rather techs. A self-proclaimed 'half-engineer', he dropped out of Computer Engineering to answer his creative calling pertaining to all things digital. He now writes what techies engineer. As a technology editor and writer for News and Feature articles on Spiceworks (formerly Toolbox), Sumeet covers a broad range of topics from cybersecurity, cloud, AI, emerging tech innovation, hardware, semiconductors, et al. Sumeet compounds his geopolitical interests with cartophilia and antiquarianism, not to mention the economics of current world affairs. He bleeds Blue for Chelsea and Team India! To share quotes or your inputs for stories, please get in touch on sumeet_wadhwani@swzd.com
Take me to Community
Do you still have questions? Head over to the Spiceworks Community to find answers.