Time to dig into Microsoft Build, which happened this week. It started with a pre-day covering Surface devices and then into the event, so I’m going to mix it all up with a focus on what matters to those delivering IT services.
Microsoft’s Surface event unveiled several significant announcements, including the launch of Copilot Plus PCs featuring AI-powered Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors, a new Recall feature for logging and retrieving user interactions, expanded Copilot integrations within Windows 11, a faster Surface Pro with an OLED display option, a redesigned Surface Laptop with improved performance and longer battery life, and partnerships with Adobe, Davinci Resolve, Capcut, and more to optimize their apps for Copilot Plus PCs.
That Recall tool? It’s a new Windows 11 tool that tracks and retrieves everything done on the computer. It includes logging app activities, tracking communications in live meetings, and remembering visited websites. Recall provides a timeline interface and deep integration into Windows, unlike similar third-party apps. It requires Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite chips and has minimum storage requirements. We’ll take a bit more later.
Microsoft has announced a major security push for Windows 11, introducing new features and updates to enhance user protections. These include adopting the Pluton security processor in new Copilot+ PCs, Local Security Authority (LSA) protection on all PCs, Windows Hello Enhanced Sign-in Security (ESS), Smart App Control, and Windows Hello and Win32 app isolation updates. Microsoft also announced increased app vetting capabilities and hardened code to address cybersecurity challenges.
Microsoft Edge will soon offer real-time video translation on sites like YouTube, LinkedIn, Coursera, and more. The AI-powered feature will be able to translate spoken content through dubbing and subtitles, making videos more accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Currently, it supports translation from Spanish to English and from English to German, Hindi, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. Microsoft plans to add more languages and supported websites in the future.
And lots of models. Microsoft Azure AI Studio has been released with the Phi-3 family of AI small language models (SLMs) and OpenAI’s GPT-4o model as an API. Azure AI Studio allows developers to build custom Copilot apps, while GPT-4o enables text, image, and audio processing in a single model. Microsoft also introduced the Phi-3-small, Phi-3-medium, and Phi-3-vision multimodal models optimized for resource-constrained environments. Phi-3-vision does not generate images but can understand and analyze them. This multimodal model is designed for mobile devices and can perform general visual reasoning tasks. Microsoft has also released other small models, such as Orca-Math, which reportedly outperforms larger models in solving math problems.
Additional features include speech analytics and universal translation in Azure AI Speech. Plus, Phi-Silica, a small language model (SLM) built explicitly for Copilot+ PCs’ Neural Processing Units (NPUs). It will be embedded in all Copilot+ PCs starting in June.
Microsoft’s Models-as-a-Service (MaaS) plan simplifies the deployment of AI models, allowing developers to focus on the creative process. With MaaS, developers can rent inference APIs and host fine-tuning without needing a virtual machine. Microsoft offers over 1,600 models through MaaS, with more to come, making it easier for developers to leverage AI functionality in their software.
This is the context setting for what’s coming in the following story. I’ll get to Recall later.
Here, I want to focus on Model as a Service. “As-a-service” is so overdone. Another buzzword that makes more sense is marketplace. Microsoft is building a marketplace for all of your model needs. That’s my key takeaway and mirrors my conversation with Amazon’s Ben Schreiner, where AWS is looking to do the same.
In the role of advisor, you will be the navigator here if model creation and build is the need. That said, you may be more leveraging CoPilot… which comes next.