Microsoft Ignite 2024, held Nov. 19 – 22 in Chicago, featured just about 100 bulletins and instrument updates, together with an AI characteristic in Teams that may translate speech and reflect a person worker’s voice. This 12 months’s overarching theme was once increasing generative AI’s summarization and rewriting features to handle extra area of interest use instances.

AI translator agent can reflect your voice in Teams

Microsoft goes all-in on AI “agents” as a way to additional summary the workings of enormous language fashions. Ideally for Microsoft, this could make the ones fashions extra able to independent, sequential movements. Microsoft Copilot Studio will allow independent brokers quickly, with this option now in preview. Other main bulletins round brokers at Ignite 2024 come with:

• Agents in SharePoint, to be had now, can solution questions on information, folders, or websites.
• A Teams Facilitator agent, which takes notes and summarizes conferences, is now in preview.
• An Interpreter agent in Teams, which is able to reflect a consumer’s voice in as much as 9 languages for real-time translation, will probably be in preview in early 2025.

Copilot Studio will quickly come with pictures and voice content material

Copilot Studio and Azure AI Foundry will probably be extra carefully connected, with a Microsoft Agent SDK to be had for each builders to create customized brokers. The Agent SDK, to be had now in preview, can draw from Azure’s huge AI style catalog.

Soon, Copilot Studio customers can experiment with multimodality within the brokers they construct. Image add and research at the moment are in preview, and voice is in non-public preview. (Private preview in Azure is invite-only.)

SEE: As of this Patch Tuesday, Copilot PC customers can remap the AI button.

Azure AI Foundry provides new features

Microsoft introduced a brand new solution to get admission to AI within the Azure AI Foundry, a hub for AI fashions and answers.

Azure AI Foundry is out there in preview thru both an SDK or on-line portal and interoperates with GitHub and Visual Studio. Both be offering rather other choices: the SDK is helping admins and app builders assessment AI fashions and take a look at apps sooner than deploying them. The portal replaces the previous Azure AI Studio and gives control of AI apps, fashions, and products and services.

Redmond additionally introduced a carrier permitting builders to make and deploy AI brokers. Azure AI Agent Service will probably be in preview in December.

In different Azure information:

• Azure AI will be offering an AI scorecard containing “model cards, model versions, content safety filter configurations, and evaluation metrics.” The function of AI stories is to assist building groups whole audits and compliance stories.
• Risk and protection critiques for symbol content material will flag destructive content material generated via AI. The cross is to assist with data-driven tests of the way continuously such content material would possibly seem.
• Cloud pros can now map out AI adoption within the Cloud Adoption Framework. AI workload steerage has additionally been added to the Azure Well-Architected Framework.
• Azure AI Content Understanding, now in preview, is a streamlined workflow for turning unstructured textual content, pictures, and video right into a corpus of information. It programs in combination templates, grounding mechanisms, and self belief rankings to assist builders and enterprises unencumber AI answers.
• Developers can run AI workloads on serverless GPUs in Azure Container Apps, which can be these days in preview.

Security Exposure Management software enters basic availability

In the safety international, Microsoft offered a brand new carrier: Security Exposure Management. This carrier works in live performance with Extended Detection and Response, Microsoft Defender XDR in Microsoft Security. It supplies perception into a company’s safety posture. Now to be had to all customers, Security Exposure Management had in the past been in preview solely.

Deploying Security Exposure Management is helping carry consciousness of a company’s assault floor, analyzes assault paths, and aggregates safety posture information into “Unified Exposure Insights.” These insights, in flip, are translated into metrics to measure safety projects.

In different safety information, Security Copilot in Intune for workflow control will probably be expanded. Security Copilot will now be capable to weigh in on a broader vary of situations throughout Intune, the Intune Suite, and Windows Autopatch. Intune admins can now upload iOS, Android, macOS, and Linux units to their {hardware} stock.

Microsoft introduced a number of an identical updates for Microsoft Purview, however we gained’t duvet them exhaustively right here. See Microsoft for more info in regards to the 90-plus bulletins from the Ignite tournament.

Copilot+ PCs upload flexibility to Windows Search

Starting in early 2025, Search will glance other in File Explorer, Windows Search, and Settings. Users can seek for paperwork and pictures the usage of herbal language, and an web connection isn’t required.

Microsoft encourages trade consumers to blow their own horns activates to coworkers

In as of late’s AI infrastructure, firms generally tend to supply equipment that make adopting their AI merchandise more uncomplicated.

For instance, Copilot Analytics, set to enlarge its options in early 2025, provides insights into adoption and utilization tendencies to measure trade have an effect on. Additionally, Microsoft is gamifying AI adoption via enabling simple suggested sharing and introducing a suggested leaderboard. Both options will probably be a part of the Copilot Prompt Gallery — previously Copilot Labs. Prompt sharing will roll out with Microsoft 365 Copilot later in 2024, whilst an organization-wide “new and trending prompts” checklist is anticipated in early 2025.

One new characteristic, generative AI controls in Microsoft 356 Copilot, encourages warning with generative AI. The controls will notify customers if activates or responses in Microsoft 365 Copilot include data that may well be delicate or put a company in danger. Admins can configure Microsoft Purview Data Loss coverage for my part to compare the sensitivity in their group’s information.

Is AI ROI panning out?

In a contemporary survey, Slack printed that AI adoption may well be slowing down. Why? Some other people really feel the era hasn’t lived as much as the hype, that AI use is thought of as “lazy,” or that they don’t understand how to make use of AI.

However, in a November 2024 find out about, Microsoft reported a 10x ROI build up amongst “top” trade leaders the usage of generative AI. Most AI use instances seen via Microsoft had been eager about productiveness.

roosho coated Microsoft Ignite remotely.