The Microsoft Ignite event of 2024, which took place from Nov. 19 to 22 in Chicago, showcased close to 100 declarations and software enhancements, inclusive of an AI attribute in Teams that can convert speech and mirror an individual staff member’s voice. This annual theme centered on broadening generative AI’s summarizing and rewriting potentialities to deal with more specialized use instances.
AI translator agent can mimic your voice on Teams
Microsoft is committing wholeheartedly to AI “representatives” in an endeavor to further separate the workings of extensive language models. Microsoft is enthusiastic that this would improve the capacity of those models for independent, consecutive activities. Microsoft Copilot Studio will soon empower self-governing representatives, with this feature now accessible for preview. Additional substantial announcements concerning representatives at Ignite 2024 encompass:
- Representatives in SharePoint, presently accessible, can respond to queries on files, directories, or websites.
- A Teams Moderator representative, which takes records and recaps meetings, is currently available for preview.
- An Interpreter representative in Teams, which can mimic a user’s voice in up to nine languages for instantaneous translation, is slated to go live in early 2025.
Copilot Studio will imminently integrate imagery and audio content
Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry will be more integrally connected, with a Microsoft Representative SDK available for both developers to devise personalized representatives. The Representative SDK, currently in preview, can extract from Azure’s extensive AI model repository.
Before long, users of Copilot Studio will be able to trial the multimodality in the representatives they build. Image uploading and evaluation are presently available as a preview, and audio is undergoing a discreet preview. (Discrete previews in Azure are by invitation only.)
SEE: Upon this Patch Tuesday, Copilot PC users can reconfigure the AI button.
Azure AI Foundry extends fresh capabilities
Microsoft revealed a novel means to reach AI in the Azure AI Foundry, a nucleus for AI models and solutions.
Azure AI Foundry is now open for preview via either an SDK or web portal and is interoperable with GitHub and Visual Studio. Both offer somewhat disparate options: the SDK aids administrators and app developers in evaluating AI models and examining apps before launching them. The portal replaces the preceding Azure AI Studio and provides administration of AI apps, models, and services.
Redmond also announced a service allowing developers to craft and release AI representatives. Azure AI Representative Service is set for preview in December.
Additional Azure updates include:
- Azure AI will introduce an AI evaluation card incorporating “model cards, model versions, content safety filter configurations, and evaluation metrics.” The aspiration of AI reports is to assist development teams in finishing audits and compliance reports.
- Risk and security assessments for image content will flag detrimental content produced by AI. The aim is to aid in data-oriented assessments of how frequently such content may emerge.
- Cloud experts can currently strategize AI integration in the Cloud Adoption Framework. AI workload counsel has also been appended to the Azure Well-Architected Framework.
- Azure AI Content Understanding, currently available in preview, is a simplified workflow for converting unstructured text, imagery, and video into a body of data. It amalgamates templates, foundation mechanisms, and confidence ratings to aid developers and companies in implementing AI solutions.
- Developers can manage AI workloads on serverless GPUs in Azure Container Apps, which are currently within preview.
Security Exposure Management utility goes mainstream
In the domain of security, Microsoft launched a fresh service: Security Exposure Management. This service functions harmoniously with Extended Detection and Response, Microsoft Defender XDR in Microsoft Security. It supplies insight into an establishment’s security stance. Now accessible to all users, Security Exposure Management was formerly solely available for preview.
Implementing Security Exposure Management assists in enhancing awareness of an establishment’s vulnerability, evaluates attack routes, and consolidates security stance data into “Unified Exposure Insights.” These insights, in turn, are transformed into metrics for gauging security strategies.
Further security updates comprise the broadening of Security Copilot within Intune for workflow management. Security Copilot will now have the ability to assess an expanded range of scenarios across Intune, the Intune Suite, and Windows Autopatch. Intune administrators can now append iOS, Android, macOS, and Linux devices to their hardware inventory.
Microsoft unveiled several analogous updates for Microsoft Purview; nonetheless, those will not be comprehensively covered here. Refer to Microsoft for additional details on the over 90 announcements from the Ignite function.
Copilot+ PCs introduce versatility to Windows Search
Commencing early 2025, Search will sport a different outlook in File Explorer, Windows Search, and Settings. Users will be able to explore documents and images using plain language, sans the necessity of an internet connection.
Microsoft prompts business clients to spotlight cues to colleagues
In the present AI framework, corporations generally yield tools that ease the adoption of their AI products.
For instance, Copilot Analytics, primed for expanding its features early in 2025, furnishes insights into adoption and usage trends to assess business influence. Moreover, Microsoft is gamifying AI adoption by facilitating prompt sharing and introducing a prompt scoreboard. Both features will be part of the Copilot Prompt Gallery — formerly known as Copilot Labs. The sharing of prompts will debut with Microsoft 365 Copilot later in 2024, whereas an enterprise-wide “novel and trending prompts” list is anticipated in early 2025.
One fresh attribute, generative AI controls in Microsoft 356 Copilot, promotes vigilance with generative AI. The controls will signal users if prompts or responses in Microsoft 365 Copilot contain data that might be classified or pose a risk to an establishment. Administrators can customize Microsoft Purview Data Loss protection on an individual basis to harmonize with the sensitivity of their establishment’s data.
Is AI ROI yielding results?
In a recent survey, Slack unveiled that AI adoption may be decelerating. Why? Some individuals sense that the technology hasn’t fulfilled the buzz, that AI utilization is regarded as “inactive,” or that they lack knowledge on utilizing AI.
Nevertheless, in a November 2024 study, Microsoft noted a tenfold ROI expansion among “leading” business executives deploying generative AI. Most AI applications observed by Microsoft were oriented toward enhancing productivity.
TechRepublic covered Microsoft Ignite remotely.
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