Microsoft Ignite 2024, held Nov. 19 – 22 in Chicago, featured roughly 100 announcements and technology updates, including an AI element in Teams that can convert speech and recreate an individual owner’s voice. The conceptual AI’s ability to summarize and rewrite documents to address more specific use cases was the overall theme of this year.
Your message can be re-used in Teams as an AI speaker agent.
In an effort to make significant language versions ‘ workings more abstract, Microsoft is putting all-power on AI “agents.” Preferably for Microsoft, this may make those designs more worthy of automatic, sequential actions. Autonomous agents are currently in demo in Microsoft Copilot Studio, making it possible to do so immediately. Another key announcements around brokers at Light 2024 include:
- Officials in SharePoint, available nowadays, can answer inquiries about documents, folders, or websites.
- A Teams Facilitator representative, which takes information and explains meetings, is now in demo.
- An Interpreter adviser in Teams, which is replicate a person’s words in up to nine dialects for real-time language, will be in demo in early 2025.
Immediately, voice and image material for Copilot Studio will be available.
Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry will be more in-depth partners, with both engineers having access to a Microsoft Agent SDK to create customized agents. The Agent SDK, available today in demo, can draw from Azure’s big AI design catalog.
Users of Copilot Studio can immediately test multimodality in their built-in agents. Image post and research are now in preview, and tone is in private demo. ( Private preview in Azure is invite-only. )
Notice: As of this Patch Tuesday, Copilot Computers users may remap the Artificial option.
Azure AI Foundry offers innovative features
Microsoft made a new method available for AI users at the Azure AI Foundry, a repository for AI answers and designs.
The Azure AI Foundry integrates with GitHub and Visual Studio and is available in preview via an SDK or online website. The SDK assists administrators and game developers in evaluating AI models and testing apps before deploying them, despite having slightly different options. The site replaces the original Azure AI Studio and provides supervision of AI software, models, and services.
Additionally, Redmond made a service available that enables developers to create and deploy AI providers. In December, the Azure AI Agent Service may be rolled out.
In another Cloud information:
- Cloud AI will give an AI score containing “model cards, type versions, material security filter configurations, and evaluation metrics”. Development teams should be able to complete reviews and compliance reports with Artificial reports.
- Images with hazardous content will be screened using risk and safety assessments. The goal is to assist in data-driven evaluations of the potential frequency of such information.
- The Cloud Adoption Framework then allows sky specialists to chart out AI implementation. The Azure Well-Architected Framework now includes advice on AI task.
- Azure AI Content Understanding, then in demo, is a streamlined process for turning disorganized words, pictures, and video into a lexicon of data. It packages up designs, grounding systems, and trust ratings to help programmers and enterprises release AI solutions.
- In Azure Container Apps, which are currently in beta, designers can work AI loads on cloud GPUs.
Security Exposure Management tool enters general availability
In the security world, Microsoft introduced a new service: Security Exposure Management. Extended Detection and Response, Microsoft Defender XDR, and Microsoft Security all work together. It provides insight into an organization’s security posture. Security Exposure Management was previously only available in preview, now that it is accessible to all users.
Deploying Security Exposure Management helps raise awareness of an organization’s attack surface, analyzes attack paths, and aggregates security posture data into” Unified Exposure Insights”. These insights, in turn, are translated into metrics to measure security initiatives.
In other security news, Intune’s workflow management security copilot will be expanded. Security Copilot will now be able to weigh in on more diverse scenarios using Windows Autopatch, Intune Suite, and Intune. Intune admins can now add iOS, Android, macOS, and Linux devices to their hardware inventory.
We wo n’t go into detail about the numerous similar updates Microsoft made for the Microsoft Purview here. More details about the Ignite event’s 90+ announcements can be found at Microsoft.
Copilot + PCs add flexibility to Windows Search
Starting in early 2025, Search will look different in File Explorer, Windows Search, and Settings. Users can search for documents and photos using natural language, and an internet connection is n’t required.
Microsoft encourages business customers to present prompts to coworkers.
In today’s AI infrastructure, companies tend to produce tools that make adopting their AI products easier.
For example, Copilot Analytics, set to expand its features in early 2025, offers insights into adoption and usage trends to measure business impact. Additionally, Microsoft is gamifying AI adoption by enabling easy prompt sharing and introducing a prompt leaderboard. The Copilot Prompt Gallery, which was formerly Copilot Labs, will house both features. Prompt sharing will roll out with Microsoft 365 Copilot later in 2024, while an organization-wide “new and trending prompts” list is expected in early 2025.
One new feature, generative AI controls in Microsoft 356 Copilot, encourages caution with generative AI. If a user enters a prompt or response in Microsoft 365 Copilot with information that might be sensitive or dangerous, the controls will notify them. Administrators can set up individual Microsoft Purview Data Loss protection to match the organization’s data’s sensitivity.
Is AI ROI panning out?
According to a recent survey, Slack found that AI adoption may be sluggish. Why? Some people believe that the technology has n’t lived up to the hype, that using AI is “lazy” or that they are unsure how to use it.
However, in a November 2024 study, Microsoft reported a 10x ROI increase among” top” business leaders using generative AI. The majority of the AI use cases that Microsoft observed were productivity-focused.
TechRepublic covered Microsoft Ignite remotely.
