Microsoft, at the Build 2023 developers conference, unveiled new AI features for its services.
AI assistant for Windows 11
The tech giant integrates Copilot AI into the Windows 11 operating system. With it, users will be able to search for information, summarize documents, adjust computer settings and perform other everyday tasks.
The tool will sit on the taskbar. Public testing will begin next month.
Integration of Microsoft 365 Copilot into the Edge browser
During the presentation, representatives of the tech giant confirmed that Microsoft 365 Copilot will be integrated into the Edge browser from the outset. It will be accessible from the sidebar and will allow users to work with mail, documents, calendar and other services.
For example, a user can ask the assistant to brief colleagues on the latest product strategy update. Copilot will analyse related documents, chat conversations and emails and generate a summary.
The company did not disclose deployment timelines. According to Microsoft, Copilot is in a closed beta trial among a trusted set of enterprises.
Plugins for Microsoft 365 Copilot
The company announced plugin support for the Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant. During the presentation, the tech giant showcased three in-house extensions:
- Teams message extension;
- Power Platform connectors;
- a ChatGPT-based tool.
In addition, Copilot will support plugins from third-party developers. According to the company, the extension standard is similar to the one used in ChatGPT. This means that they support backward compatibility and can be used in both tools.
AI tools for developers
Microsoft integrates the GitHub Copilot X assistant for coding into Windows Terminal. It will be able to find errors, offer recommendations and perform actions on request.
In the future the company plans to add Copilot mode to other software development tools.
A dedicated section for AI software will appear in the Microsoft Store. Developers will be able to publish their own apps and utilities there.
In addition, AI will scan and analyse reviews of software in the store. Developers will also be able to use generative tools to populate product summaries.
Copilot in the Power Pages website development tool
announced the Copilot mode in Power Pages. With AI prompts it can generate text, forms and layouts for web pages, as well as create and edit image themes and site design.
According to company representatives, Copilot in Power Pages has ‘guardrails’ to protect against issues such as generating toxic content.
AI tool for moderating text and images
In the context of responsible AI, Microsoft unveiled the Azure AI Content Safety tool, designed to detect ‘unacceptable’ content in images and texts.
The models understand English, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, German, Portuguese, French and Japanese. They assign a severity score to the flagged fragment, guiding moderators on what action to take.
According to the company, Azure AI Content Safety protects against biased, sexist, racist, hateful, violent and self-harm content.
Bing as the search engine in ChatGPT
OpenAI has begun using Bing as the default search for ChatGPT. The new feature is already available to subscribers of the chatbot. In the near future the plugin will be available to all users.
Earlier, in March Microsoft introduced Copilot AI for Office apps.
In February the tech giant unveiled the updated Bing search engine based on ChatGPT. Later it emerged that the tool runs on the large multimodal GPT-4 model from OpenAI.