The biggest AI announcements from Microsoft Ignite 2023

Bing Chat has now been rebranded to Copilot. (Representative Image)

Microsoft announced a slew of AI updates at the Microsoft Ignite event a few days ago. Here is a look at the most important announcements that will shape Microsoft's future for the years to come.

Copilot on more services

Microsoft's Copilot will not be available on more services, such as the company's premier office suite, Microsoft 365. Enterprise users have already enjoyed the embedded functionality since November. It will now be available to the general public.

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Microsoft Bing chat renamed to Copilot

Speaking of Copilot, Microsoft has now completely rebranded its ChatGPT competitor as Copilot. Bing's enterprise chat service has also seen the change, and will adopt the Copilot moniker. It will now work on Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome and Apple Safari, with mobile versions coming soon.

Custom in-house AI chipsets

Microsoft is looking to reduce dependency on GPUs with custom solutions. The two chips (Azure Maia 100 and Azure Cobalt 100) Microsoft announced will aimed at in-house and data centre solutions.

Maia 100 can be used to train and run AI models, while Cobalt 100 is used for general-purpose workloads for more efficiency.

Copilot for Azure, Service and Studio

Copilot Azure is meant to be a competitor to Google's Duet AI solutions in Google Cloud, and will be a chat-based assistant for Microsoft's cloud customers. Copilot for Service is meant customer service solutions, and can answer commonly asked questions for customer service agents.

Copilot Studio can create a customised version of Copilot, for various specific uses like expense management. There is no need to code for this, and you can customise the assistant using natural language prompts.

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Upgraded Teams with a new UI and features

Microsoft Teams has now been updated with a new user interface (UI), along with AI-powered features such as Live transcripts, portrait blur, collaborative notes and a new Channels experience.

Model-as-a-Service

The new model-as-a-service solution allows partners to easily integrate other AI models such as Meta's Llama 2, into their workflows. Upcoming models from Mistral and Jais will also be compatible.