Microsoft Build 2024 emphasized Microsoft’s strategic expansion of AI integration across its product portfolio, unveiling significant AI-driven features designed to enhance productivity, user experience, and developer capabilities.
Microsoft Build 2024 – Key Points
- Copilot AI Agents: New AI agents, termed Copilot, can automate routine tasks such as monitoring emails, onboarding, and data entry, reducing mundane workload without replacing jobs. These capabilities will be previewed in Copilot Studio later in the year.
- Phi-3-Vision: The latest addition to Microsoft’s Phi-3 AI model family, Phi-3-vision, is a multimodal model that can read text and analyze images. It’s designed for mobile devices, making advanced image analysis widely accessible.
- Edge Browser Real-Time Translation: Microsoft Edge introduces an AI-powered feature that provides real-time video translation, capable of dubbing videos from platforms like YouTube into various languages including Spanish, German, Hindi, Italian, and Russian.
- Custom Emoji in Microsoft Teams: Launching in July, this feature allows users to create and use custom emojis within Teams. Admins can control emoji permissions to maintain appropriate usage within organizational domains.
- Snapdragon Dev Kit: Qualcomm’s new $899 Snapdragon Dev Kit for Windows features the Snapdragon X Elite chip, 32GB of RAM, and a 512GB SSD. It’s designed to facilitate development on Windows with advanced hardware capabilities.
- File Explorer Git Integration: Microsoft integrates Git into File Explorer, enabling developers to manage file statuses, commit messages, and branches directly from the file system. The update also includes native support for 7-zip and TAR compression.
- Advanced Paste in PowerToys: This new feature in the PowerToys suite for Windows 11 uses AI to convert clipboard content into different formats like plaintext, markdown, or JSON. It requires an OpenAI API key and provides advanced text manipulation options.
- Microsoft Build 2024 Event Highlights:
- Copilot Plus PCs: New Arm-powered PCs, including a Surface Laptop, featuring an emulation layer called Prism for seamless x86 app compatibility.
- Windows Volumetric Apps: Capability to extend Windows apps into 3D space for Meta Quest headsets, enhancing virtual reality applications.
- AI Partnerships: Collaboration with Khan Academy to provide AI-powered educational tools free for US educators.
- GPT-4o on Azure: OpenAI’s latest model, now available on Azure, offers multimodal input and output for advanced conversational AI.
- Developer Tools: Enhanced AI development support on Windows, including Copilot extensions and improved Teams features like syntax formatting for code and co-editing with Loop.
- Microsoft and AI Future: Microsoft’s ongoing investment in AI, highlighted at Microsoft Build 2024 by partnerships and new product features, underscores its commitment to advancing AI capabilities and supporting developers in creating powerful AI-driven applications.
