With demand for AI-driven business solutions growing, how could Microsoft’s investments into the technology influence businesses’ work in 2023?
With every passing year, it seems that AI becomes an even bigger and more frequently discussed topic in the worlds of business and technology. It is true that the number of applicable AI technologies in the world is growing. An example of this happening is Microsoft’s recent commitment to making AI technology accessible for their customers. The tech giant has not only been working on their own AI developments, but have funnelled considerable investment into other AI ventures. Many companies are seeing an increased interest in AI. For example, a company providing IT support for Estate Agents that we spoke to, stated that many of their clients are asking about whether AI could be applied in their organisation to add value in areas. So, how is Microsoft making this desire more attainable for businesses?
Microsoft and OpenAI
Many people will be familiar with ChatGPT, the conversational AI that has been making headlines and consistently trending on various social media platforms. This AI was developed by a nonprofit known as OpenAI; and a few years ago, Microsoft invested $1 billion into the organisation. Since then, Microsoft have been leveraging OpenAI’s research and development, along with their own proprietary R&D, with the intention of developing new AI resources for their customers. A company providing IT support North London companies use stated that AI has many useful applications for the everyday user – whether it be streamlining meetings, or making internet browsing more efficient.
3 Ways Microsoft are Integrating AI
So, what AI developments are Microsoft working on for their products and services? Below are three examples that can be read about – and even tested – right now…
1. Microsoft Teams Premium
The AI-powered Microsoft service that is available to use right now is Microsoft Teams Premium. This is an add-on license for Microsoft 365 that unlocks certain features within Teams. Microsoft have publicised Teams Premium as featuring a number of cutting edge AI-powered features that are designed to improve the meeting experience. The AI features in Teams Premium are as follows:
- Intelligent Recap – This encapsulates a number of features that revolve around making meetings more impactful. For instance, intelligent recap is able to generate actionable items from meeting recordings, as well as auto-generate chapters for recordings, so that users can skip to relevant parts.
- Intelligent Meeting Notes – Another AI-powered feature means that notes can be generated from meetings automatically.
2. The New Bing
Another area that Microsoft is working to infuse with AI technology is with their search engine and web browser. The new Microsoft Bing will combined a new, next generation language model developed by OpenAI, as well as a proprietary AI model that leverages OpenAI specifically for internet searches (known as Microsoft Prometheus). This new Bing will be able to refine user’s search queries through an interactive chat function. It will also be able provide custom answers to queries by analysing multiple sources from across the web, and generating a summary of the information.
3. Project Brainwave
Microsoft’s Project Brainwave is a proprietary hardware architecture that Microsoft have been working on alongside Intel. It is designed specifically to be used for AI calculations (so that they can be executed as quickly and efficiently as possible). Microsoft have already showcase Project Brainwave being used in conjunction with Azure Machine Learning – their hope is that this new hardware architecture will make Azure the best cloud computing platform for AI. According to the company we spoke with that provides IT support London companies rely on, cloud-based AI is a great way for businesses to access the technology at a cost-effective rate.
