Microsoft

Microsoft has announced the rollout of two important updates to Copilot for Microsoft 365 users: prioritized access to GPT-4 Turbo models and the removal of limits on the number and length of conversations, as well as the addition of file upload functionality. In addition, Microsoft will provide Copilot for Microsoft 365 users with expanded image generation capabilities in Microsoft Designer and include priority access during peak hours.

On April 4, Business Insider disclosed an internal Microsoft memo revealing that the company is building a specialized team responsible for advancing the development of Copilot and its related products. The memo was written by Microsoft's vice president of artificial intelligence Jared Spataro (Jared Spataro), said that the plan to adjust the existing Teams department employees, transfer employees to join this new Copilot team, in addition to appropriate layoffs. (Source: IT Home)

Microsoft and OpenAI are closely planning an ambitious data center project to build an AI supercomputer called Stargate, according to tech media outlet The Information, citing sources. The computer will be equipped with millions of dedicated server chips and is designed to power OpenAI's AI technology. The project is expected to cost up to $100 billion, which is reportedly 100 times the cost of some of the largest data centers today. Microsoft will underwrite the project's capital investment, showing...

Microsoft Research Asia introduces TaskMatrix.AI, connecting big models with millions of APIs to accomplish diverse tasks.The TaskMatrix.AI architecture includes a multimodal conversation base model, an API platform, an API selector, and an API executor to enable efficient task processing. Through reinforcement learning with human feedback and providing feedback to API developers, TaskMatrix.AI is capable of lifelong learning and highly interpretable. (Quantum Bits)

Microsoft is improving the functionality of its Copilot in Microsoft Teams. This includes integrating verbal transcripts from meetings and written chats into one view to help users more easily keep up with what they may have missed in a meeting. In addition, Copilot in Teams has improved the ability to edit messages in chat, allowing users to rewrite messages in new ways.

Microsoft has announced a business app launch event on April 10, where its product leaders and engineers will come together to unveil the latest AI features and capabilities in Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power Platform.

Mikhail Parakhin, head of Microsoft's Bing and advertising businesses, is stepping down from those roles to look for a new position. A week ago, Microsoft appointed DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to head its consumer artificial intelligence (AI) business and asked Parakhin to report to him.Parakhin's exit marks the first top-level shuffle since CEO Satya Nadella appointed Suleyman last week to be the head of a unified push for this business that triggered the first top-level shuffle. Two people familiar with the matter said last week that the move...

Microsoft's move to place the intelligent assistant Copilot icon at the center of the Windows taskbar has sparked an outcry from users. Numerous users on the Reddit forums have suggested that it be moved to an inconspicuous system tray, criticizing its immature functionality and interference with usage habits. Users are mainly against it because of the forced addition of features and the confusing interface, and most of them advocate removing Copilot altogether.(IT Home)

On March 23rd, StepStar, founded by Daxin Jiang, former Microsoft Global Vice President and Chief Scientist of Microsoft Internet Engineering Asia, launched the Step series of general-purpose models, including Step-1 100 billion parameter language model, Step-1V 100 billion parameter multimodal model, and Step-2 trillion parameter MoE language model preview, and provided API interfaces to some of the partners to try out. The product efficiency tools based on Step-1 and Step-1V 100 billion parameter big models, Leapfrog and the AI open world platform, Bubble Duck, have been fully opened.

Microsoft plans to host a special event on May 20 that will focus on Windows and Surface AI technology. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will share the company's "vision for AI across hardware and software." The event will also unveil consumer versions of the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6.

Some Microsoft insiders are concerned that the company's AI strategy is overly focused on its partnership with AI company OpenAI, leading some to believe that Microsoft has become an "honorary IT department" for OpenAI. This has also led to the departure of some executives involved in Microsoft's own AI programs. Microsoft's Azure AI organization will now prioritize Azure OpenAI services, leading to cuts in Microsoft's internal services such as Azure Cognitive Search, Azure AI Robotics Services and Kinect DK, or the need to work with its...

Microsoft Research has developed a new AI-based electronic structure computation framework, M-OFDFT, which improves the computational efficiency of electronic structure methods while maintaining the comparable computational accuracy of KSDFT. M-OFDFT utilizes orbital-free density flooding theory and deep learning models to significantly improve the accuracy and efficiency of electronic structure computation, especially when dealing with large-scale molecular systems, and demonstrates excellent extrapolation performance. The successful application of M-OFDFT on small molecules and protein systems validates its accuracy and efficiency, demonstrates the potential of AI in advancing the development of electronic structure computation, and opens up new research directions and application scenarios. ...

In his talk at Stanford University, Mark, CTO of Microsoft Azure, provided a comprehensive overview of how Microsoft Azure enables optimization and innovation in generative AI model training inference. He emphasized partnerships with companies such as OpenAI and Microsoft's innovations in AI hardware and service delivery, including the development of Project Forge Resource Manager and multi-LoRa fine-tuning services. Also discussed are the possibilities of tiny models, research on reasoning through high-quality data, and an exploration of future directions for AI, including the importance of classified AI. (Web3 SkyCity)

A Microsoft engineer, Shane Jones , has expressed concerns about Microsoft's AI text and image generator, Copilot Designer, generating violent and pornographic images. The engineer, who has worked at Microsoft for six years, tested Copilot Designer in his free time and found that the AI tool generated pornographic and violent content. He warned the company, but said Microsoft failed to take appropriate action.Jones worked within the company to highlight the issues, and ultimately he chose to write to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and...

On March 6, Microsoft will reportedly release the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 on March 21, which are expected to be the first AI PC products from Microsoft. These devices will be equipped with Intel Core Ultra or Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite-based processors with the latest NPUs to enhance AI capabilities. The new products will be equipped with "AI Explorer" feature, which is the difference between AI PCs and regular PCs, AI Explorer can work on any application, users can...

Microsoft has released an update for Windows 11 that focuses on upgrades and improvements to Copilot. The new Copilot version adds features such as controlling the computer's power-saving mode, launching accessibility features such as the narrator or magnifying glass, displaying available WiFi networks, and cleaning up the Recycle Bin.This update for Windows 11 has already begun to be pushed out, and Copilot's new features will go live in late March.

Microsoft proposes a 1-bit large language model, they introduce a 1-bit large language model variant called BitNet b1.58. This model is comparable to a model with the same model size and training tokens in terms of perplexity and final task performance, while performing more cost-effectively in terms of latency, memory, throughput, and energy consumption. This 1.58-bit large language model defines a new scaling lemma and provides a way to train a new generation of high-performance and cost-effective large models. In addition, it introduces a new computational paradigm and provides a new way of designing models for 1-bi...

On Monday local time, Microsoft President Brad Smith announced a set of principles to promote innovation and competition in artificial intelligence. The AI Access Principles are designed to "partially address Microsoft's growing role and responsibility as an AI innovator and market leader," Smith said. "By publishing these principles, we commit to providing the broad technology access needed to enable organizations and individuals around the world to develop and use AI in ways that serve the public interest. "The principles include providing access and support for AI developers to make AI models and development tools available to software applications around the world for ...

On the evening of February 26, Microsoft officially announced a long-term partnership with French generative AI unicorn Mistral AI. This partnership will focus on three core areas: Microsoft will support Mistral AI's big model training and inference efforts through the Azure AI supercomputing infrastructure; Microsoft and Mistral AI will offer Mistral AI's Models as a Service (MaaS) through Azure AI Studio and Azure Machine Learning Models Catalog to its customers Advanced Models; Microsoft and Mistral AI will explore...

Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced a new partnership with French startup Mistral AI, considered the European version of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, by injecting 2 billion euros into the company. Under the agreement, Mistral's large-scale language models (LLMs) will be made available on Microsoft's Azure cloud computing platform, becoming the second company after OpenAI to host LLMs on the platform. One X user posted: "I'm not going to lie; I'm sorry Mistral didn't open source any of their models. I thought they were on the OSS team." Another...

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