Microsoft ( MSFT ) on Tuesday debuted a slew of new AI features at its Build conference in Seattle, including OpenAI’s new GPT-4o, a trio of small language models and Microsoft’s new Cobalt 100 processor.
The announcements come as Silicon Valley ramps up its investment in artificial intelligence and tech giants like Microsoft, Google ( GOOG , GOOGL ), Amazon ( AMZN ), Meta ( META ) and Apple ( AAPL ) race to outdo each other during the biggest tech battle in years.
Microsoft offering OpenAI’s GPT-4o through its Azure AI Studio was the company’s biggest announcement on Tuesday.
The model, which OpenAI debuted during a live event last week, is multimodal and can understand text, audio and video inputs. That demonstration has since become controversial after actress Scarlett Johansson on Monday demanded the company change the voice of its chatbot, which OpenAI showed answering questions.
Microsoft’s news also comes a week after Google unveiled a slew of AI products at its I/O developer conference, including a new version of Google Search that generates AI-based answers to user queries.
Microsoft said users will now be able to develop their own copilots — essentially AI-powered programs — using GPT-4o to make apps that can respond to images, voice and text. The Windows maker also said it will make its pre-release version of Copilot on Azure available to all customers in the next few weeks.
Microsoft also showed off its Phi-3-small, Phi-3-medium, and Phi-3-vision small language models. Designed to run on devices, the Phi-3 models do not need a network connection, allowing users to access them in environments where they would not otherwise be able to run cloud-based models such as the GPT-4o.
Phi-3-vision is particularly interesting because it allows users to input images and text and then get information about them via text outputs. So, for example, users will be able to do things like ask questions about charts, graphs or images without having to jump online.
Microsoft 365 is also getting copilot upgrades with Copilot for Microsoft 365’s new Team Copilot. The app, Microsoft says, can manage meeting agendas and take notes, summarize Teams chats, and answer questions about those conversations. The app can also track user deadlines and notify individual team members when they need to take action.
In addition to the new software and developer opportunities, Microsoft also said it will begin previewing Azure virtual machines running on the company’s new Arm-based Cobalt 100 cloud processors.
Virtual machines are basically software-simulated versions of computers. So instead of having to run 50 separate desktops, you can run 50 virtual machines on a powerful server.
Microsoft claims its Cobalt 100 chip delivers 40 percent better performance than previous ARM-based virtual machine systems. In addition to the Cobalt 100 processor, the company says it will begin offering AMD’s ( AMD ) MI300X chip for developers looking to train and implement AI applications.
This is all part of Microsoft’s efforts to continue to grow its cloud business through AI applications. Google and Amazon are using a similar strategy to expand their respective cloud empires as well, but Microsoft’s multibillion-dollar investment in partner OpenAI has helped propel the company to the top of the AI conversation.
In its most recent quarter, Microsoft said AI products contributed 7 percentage points of growth to revenue from Azure and other cloud services. This is an increase of 6 percentage points over the previous quarter.
A year ago, Microsoft first announced its AI percentage contribution to Azure, saying it added 1 percentage point to Azure’s revenue at the time.
Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.
Click here for the latest technology news that will affect the stock market.
Read the latest financial and business news from Yahoo Finance
