A few weeks ago, Microsoft Ignite was driven by the pervasive influence of artificial intelligence (AI). AI is making significant strides in every industry, reshaping not only our work practices but also our daily lives. Here's a summary of the latest developments in Copilot and Azure AI unveiled at Microsoft's mid-November event.

Microsoft Copilot

In the first quarter of this year, Microsoft launched Copilot for Microsoft 365, aiming to unleash creativity, unlock productivity, and uplevel skills. The subsequent months have demonstrated Copilot's transformative impact on our work processes. Microsoft's research indicates that users completed certain tasks 29% faster, with 70% reporting increased productivity, a 64% reduction in email processing time, and 77% expressing a desire to continue using Copilot after trying it.

Microsoft plans to expand Copilot across all workflow areas, with initial availability in solutions such as:

Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise, now integrated as Copilot, assisting with answering questions, content creation, and data reasoning.

Copilot for Microsoft 365, available for enterprises since November 1st, integrated into Microsoft 365 applications, enhancing efficiency, teamwork, and aligning with existing security, privacy, identity, and compliance policies. Copilot for Microsoft 365 utilizes Microsoft Graph, and a new Copilot Dashboard helps assess its impact on the organization.

Microsoft Copilot Studio is a low-cost, low-code tool for customizing Copilot and creating standalone copilots. This tool makes it easy to customize for enterprise scenarios, integrate critical business data, and connect Copilot to other data sources. Copilot Studio is available, and the integration with Copilot for Microsoft 365 is available in preview.

Microsoft Copilot for Service is the latest role-based support solution from Copilot, assisting businesses in accelerating their customer service AI transformation. This solution, which includes Copilot for Microsoft 365, provides agents with AI-driven responses and resources personalized to each customer problem and conversation. Microsoft Copilot for Service has the flexibility to integrate with an organization's existing CRM and contact center systems, including Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk, and can easily extend to other systems. It can be further customized using Microsoft Copilot Studio. Copilot for Service will be available for preview from early December and will be generally available from 2024.

Microsoft Copilot for Azure simplifies IT administration by helping to plan, operate, optimize, and troubleshoot cloud infrastructure and services. Copilot is available on the Azure portal and will also be available from the Azure mobile app and CLI in the future.

Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 guides frontline workers, helping them complete complex tasks and solve problems faster without interrupting workflows.

Generative AI Models with Azure AI

The Models as a Service (MaaS) in the Azure AI model catalog for Llama 2 offers pay-as-you-go inference APIs and hosted fine-tuning. MaaS simplifies the process for generative AI developers to create applications using Large Language Models (LLM) by providing access to Llama 2 as an API. MaaS also provides the opportunity to fine-tune Llama 2 with the client's own data. MaaS is expected to be available soon.

Azure AI Studio, designed by Microsoft, aims to simplify the development of generative AI applications. AI developers can leverage Azure AI Studio to explore, build, test, and deploy their AI innovations at scale. A public preview of Azure AI Studio is available now.

Vector Search, a feature of Azure AI Search, is now generally available. Vector Search in Azure AI Search offers a comprehensive vector database solution for storing, indexing, querying, filtering, and retrieving AI data in a secure, enterprise-class environment. Vector search provides fast search through large datasets for precision, while semantic ranking improves the relevance and quality of search results.

GPT-4 Turbo with Vision, the large multimodal model (LMM) developed by OpenAI, will be available for public preview on Azure OpenAI from the end of November. GPT-4 Turbo with Vision incorporates both natural language processing and visual understanding, enabling it to analyze images and provide textual answers to questions about them. GPT-4 Turbo with Vision offers state-of-the-art AI capabilities on Azure OpenAI Service, along with enterprise-grade security and responsible AI governance, and exclusive access to personalized enhancements from Azure AI Services.

For more information on Microsoft's latest and upcoming services or to explore integration possibilities for your organization, please contact Noventiq’s Microsoft AI experts who will be happy to assist you.