Microsoft Build: Expect Much Ado About AI

Azure is getting a few updates.

First, the Azure OpenAI Service is getting new reference architectures that jump-start app development. Look for capabilities including cloud guides that show how to optimize quality and performance, while controlling costs.

Next, Azure AI Search has some updates in preview. Those include the following:

From there, Azure AI Studio is now generally available. Microsoft calls the platform a key component of the Copilot stack. As such, developers can pursue “responsible” generative AI development, Microsoft said. Azure AI Studio supplies AI tools, APIs, models, a testbed environment and more.

But, of course, there’s a lot more when it comes to Azure OpenAI and AI. 

Microsoft says its “major generative advancements” are “poised to transform the AI landscape.”

It’s backing those bold claims with the following releases:

Generative AI comes with unique concerns around responsibility and safety. As such, Microsoft is releasing new Safeguard Copilots alongside new Azure AI Content Safety capabilities.

Key enhancements include the soon-to-come introduction of Custom Categories, which will let users build custom filters for generative AI apps. Custom Categories also will provide options for standard or rapid deployment. Users may address incidents and emerging threats by deploying new filters in less than an hour, per Microsoft.

Look, too, for Prompt Shields and Groundedness Detection, in preview, in Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service and AI Studio. These content filters will mitigate both indirect and jailbreak prompt injection attacks and detect when large language models produce ungrounded or hallucinated materials.

Lastly, Microsoft Azure AI Speech, a gated service, is getting some new features that will help developers build better voice-enabled apps. The updates, in preview, include speech analytics and video dubbing. 

Developers working with Microsoft Fabric, the analytics and data platform, have a few additions to anticipate. 

First up, Microsoft has debuted real-time intelligence. It’s a SaaS solution meant to speed up analyst decision-making via low-code/no-code or code-rich interfaces. There’s a single portal for working with events in Fabric, as well as event streams that provide connectors to cross-cloud sources and more. Insights are AI-powered. 

Also expect the Fabric Workload Development Kit for extending apps within Fabric, as well as a sharing feature and other, more granular additions. Perhaps of greatest interest to Channel Futures readers is that Microsoft is infusing Azure OpenAI Service into every Fabric layer. This will support conversational language for creating dataflows and data pipelines, generating code and entire functions, building machine learning models or visualizing results, Microsoft said. Copilot in Fabric is generally available in Power BI and available in preview in the other Fabric workloads.

When it comes to Azure Infrastructure, Microsoft has a few things in mind.

First, there’s the new Azure Compute Fleet service. This will simplify the provisioning of Azure compute capacity across different virtual machine types (up to 10,000 of them), availability zones and pricing models. It’s in preview.

Second, Microsoft Azure Migrate and Azure Container Storage have several new features. Azure Migrate will support Azure Hybrid Benefits during assessments and business cases for Linux workloads. This feature, in preview, will provide higher savings for Linux workloads moving to Azure through Azure Migrate. 

Meanwhile, Azure Container Storage, which will be generally available within a month, serves as Microsoft’s fully managed, software-defined storage solution for Kubernetes. It will deliver volume management for operators and developers using Azure Kubernetes Service.

Finally, Azure has a new virtual machine series built for AI and cloud-native workloads. Keep an eye out for a new Cobalt 100 Arm-based VM, based on Microsoft’s custom silicon series announced last November. It’s now in preview and the new Azure ND MI300X v5 VM is now generally available. Microsoft says users will get up to 40% improved performance compared to the previous generation of Arm-based VMs on Azure and availability for use in Azure Kubernetes Service node pools.

The ND MI300X v5 series, on the other hand, is optimized for demanding AI and high-performance computing workloads. It features an AMD Instinct MI300X AI accelerator, providing each VM with 1.5 TB of high-bandwidth memory and 5.2 TB/s of memory bandwidth. These VMs are also connected by NVIDIA Quantum-2 CX7 InfiniBand, offering 3.2 TB/s of scale-out bandwidth per VM, which allows scaling up to thousands of VMs and tens of thousands of GPUs, Microsoft said.

An overview of developer-related updates would be incomplete without a look at Kubernetes. To that point, Microsoft has unveiled Automatic, meant to make Kubernetes adoption easier for developers, DevOps teams and platform engineers. It will automate AKS cluster setup and management, embedding best-practice configurations, and providing access to the Kubernetes APIs.

Several new AKS features, in preview, will improve security and ease of operation, Microsoft said. Those include: 

Microsoft is integrating its Copilot capabilities all over the place. We’ve provided an overview of some examples.

For coders, Visual Studio 17.10 now comes with GitHub Copilot. Now generally available, Microsoft says this “revolutionizes” the development experience with smarter, context-aware coding assistance and intuitive interfaces. 

If you’re looking for more Copilot capabilities in Azure, Microsoft is ready. The following enhancements are now available in preview:

Next, Microsoft 365 will let developers create copilots in SharePoint. That way, people can more easily find files or answer questions. This is now available in an Early Access Program, and will be available in preview coming later this year.

On the whole, Microsoft is unifying all Microsoft Copilot extensibility concepts, including plugins and connectors, into a single construct called Copilot extensions. These will enhance Microsoft Copilot by enabling new actions and customized knowledge for grounding within Copilot. 

Developers will be able to create Copilot extensions with Microsoft Copilot Studio or by using Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code. 

If you work with Microsoft Edge for Business, or your clients do, here’s a significant update. Microsoft has added two new capabilities that guard against data leaks and vulnerabilities. 

The first is screenshot prevention. This will apply across Microsoft 365, Microsoft Defender for Cloud Apps, Microsoft Intune Mobile Application Management and Microsoft Purview. 

The second is a management service that will let IT admins see which devices have Edge instances that are out of date and at risk. From there, admins can enforce a browser restart to install updates, enable automatic browser updates or enable enhanced security mode for added protections. This will be in preview in the coming weeks.

Not to be left out, Microsoft Teams Premium is getting its own set of new AI features and data protection.

The new additions include: 

A lot more AI-related announcements stand to come out of Microsoft Build this week. As we noted in the introduction, industry observers are talking about what might be coming for Windows. Microsoft has been battling slumping PC sales over the past two years. The rumors around more AI capabilities for its PCs could turn into reality. The question then will become whether enterprises and other buyers are keen enough on AI to return to Microsoft PCs in droves. 

A lot more AI-related announcements stand to come out of Microsoft Build this week. As we noted in the introduction, industry observers are talking about what might be coming for Windows. Microsoft has been battling slumping PC sales over the past two years. The rumors around more AI capabilities for its PCs could turn into reality. The question then will become whether enterprises and other buyers are keen enough on AI to return to Microsoft PCs in droves.