Microsoft Ignite 2023: all the AI news from Microsoft’s IT pro event – The Verge The Verge is about technology and how it makes us feel. Founded in 2011, we offer our audience everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations, on our site, in video, and in podcasts. 2023-11-15T16:00:00+00:00 https://www.theverge.com/rss/stream/23725048 https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/01/verge-rss-large_80b47e.png?w=150&h=150&crop=1 Tom Warren <![CDATA[Microsoft is finally making custom chips — and they’re all about AI]]> https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23960345/microsoft-cpu-gpu-ai-chips-azure-maia-cobalt-specifications-cloud-infrastructure 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00
Microsoft’s new Azure Maia 100 GPU. | Image: Microsoft

The rumors are true: Microsoft has built its own custom AI chip that can be used to train large language models and potentially avoid a costly reliance on Nvidia. Microsoft has also built its own Arm-based CPU for cloud workloads. Both custom silicon chips are designed to power its Azure data centers and ready the company and its enterprise customers for a future full of AI.

Microsoft's Azure Maia AI chip and Arm-powered Azure Cobalt CPU are arriving in 2024, on the back of a surge in demand this year for Nvidia's H100 GPUs that are widely used to train and operate generative image tools and large language models. There's such high demand f …

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]]> Emma Roth <![CDATA[Microsoft and Nvidia are making it easier to run AI models on Windows]]> https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23960471/microsoft-windows-ai-studio-nvidia-developers 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00

Microsoft and Nvidia want to help developers run and configure AI models on their Windows PCs. During the Microsoft Ignite event on Wednesday, Microsoft announced Windows AI Studio: a new hub where developers can access AI models and tweak them to suit their needs.

Windows AI Studio allows developers to access development tools and models from the existing Azure AI Studio and other services like Hugging Face. It also offers an end-to-end "guided workspace setup" with model configuration UI and walkthroughs to fine-tune various small language models (SLMs), such as Microsoft's Phi, Meta's Llama 2, and Mistral.

Windows AI Studio lets develop …

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]]> Tom Warren <![CDATA[Microsoft rebrands Bing Chat to Copilot, to better compete with ChatGPT]]> https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23960517/microsoft-copilot-bing-chat-rebranding-chatgpt-ai 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00

Microsoft launched its big AI push earlier this year as part of its Bing search engine, integrating a ChatGPT-like interface directly into its search results. Now less than a year later, it's dropping the Bing Chat branding and moving to Copilot, the new name for the chat interface you might have used in Bing, Microsoft Edge, and Windows 11.

Microsoft initially talked up the Google search competition for its AI ambitions earlier this year, but it now looks like it has its sights set on ChatGPT instead. The Bing Chat rebranding comes just days after OpenAI revealed 100 million people are using ChatGPT on a weekly basis. Despite a close partn …

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]]> Umar Shakir <![CDATA[Microsoft debuts new unified security solution with Security Copilot]]> https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23960663/microsoft-ignite-security-copilot-unified-sentinel-defender-xdr 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00
Unified Microsoft Defender dashboard with analytics and Sentinel on the sidebar. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is combining its Sentinel security analytics and Microsoft Defender XDR platforms into an "industry first" unified security operations platform - with the company's Security Copilot chatbot stationed centrally for IT and security personnel to administer everything easily. During the company's enterprise-focused Ignite conference today, Microsoft is announcing expanded conversational AI abilities to better centrally manage its security platforms.

Microsoft originally announced Security Copilot in March, demonstrating how its generative AI system can summarize all the alerts and data points that typically inundate security professio …

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]]> Tom Warren <![CDATA[Microsoft Teams is about to go 3D with VR meetings]]> https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23960720/microsoft-teams-microsoft-mesh-immersive-meetings-january-2024-launch 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00

When I first used Microsoft Mesh, the company's mixed reality platform, I said it felt "like the virtual future of Microsoft Teams meetings." Now, nearly three years later, Microsoft is making immersive 3D Teams meetings a reality. In January, Microsoft Mesh is being integrated into Teams to allow co-workers to meet together in a virtual space - no VR headset required.

It's a big shift in Microsoft's original vision for Mesh - an entire platform built on top of Azure that Microsoft hoped developers would tap into - but then a lot has changed with Microsoft's VR / AR ambitions over the past few years. Microsoft's HoloLens boss, Alex Kipman, …

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]]> Tom Warren <![CDATA[Microsoft Teams’ latest AI trick cleans and decorates your messy webcam background]]> https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23961943/microsoft-teams-ai-decorate-background-voice-isolation 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00

Microsoft is adding two new AI-powered features to Teams soon that will improve your voice and webcam. A new "decorate your background" feature is coming to Microsoft Teams Premium in early 2024 and uses generative AI effects to clean up and replace clutter in the background when on a video call.

While Microsoft Teams has long offered a variety of virtual backgrounds, this decoration feature will work in a real-world room, much like the augmented reality filters you find on Snapchat. It can even add plants, lights, and seasonal objects to the background behind you. We'll have to see how this functions in reality, but if it works as well as …

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]]> Jess Weatherbed <![CDATA[Microsoft’s planning tools will soon be less confusing]]> https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23962052/microsoft-planner-task-management-announcement-date-ignite 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00

Microsoft is overhauling its project management services to help small teams and businesses better keep track of work. During the company's Ignite event on Wednesday, Microsoft announced that some of its existing task management and planning tools - Microsoft To Do, Microsoft Planner, and Microsoft Project for the web - will be combined into a single, unified experience next year under the name Microsoft Planner.

The new Microsoft Planner experience will first be available within the Planner app in Microsoft Teams in spring 2024, with a web experience to follow later that year. The existing Tasks by Planner and To Do apps in Microsoft Teams …

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]]> Wes Davis <![CDATA[Microsoft’s Copilot AI gets more personalized in its first update since launch]]> https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23960456/microsoft-365-copilot-profile-teams-sales-service-update 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00

Microsoft announced a plethora of changes for its Microsoft Copilot AI during Microsoft Ignite today that make the chatbot more interactive and participatory, particularly in Teams meetings. The updates expand Copilot's role as an enterprise helper in Office apps like Teams, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

Microsoft has added some flexibility to the chatbot's output, so users can tweak it with instructions to make its formatting and tone more to their personal liking. Word and PowerPoint will get the new personalization features to start, but the company says other Microsoft 365 apps will gain support in time.

A grid of six people with a chat window on the right that's filled with summarized information from Copilot.

Microsoft also announced changes to …

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]]> Tom Warren <![CDATA[Microsoft Copilot Studio lets anyone build custom AI copilots]]> https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23960417/microsoft-copilot-ai-studio-custom-gpts-chatgpt-openai 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00

Last week OpenAI announced its new GPT platform to let anyone create their own version of ChatGPT, and now Microsoft is following with Copilot Studio: a new no-code solution that lets businesses create a custom copilot or integrate a custom ChatGPT AI chatbot.

Microsoft Copilot Studio is designed primarily to extend Microsoft 365 Copilot, the paid service that Microsoft launched earlier this month. Businesses can now customize the Copilot in Microsoft 365 to include datasets, automation flows, and even custom copilots that aren't part of the Microsoft Graph that powers Microsoft 365 Copilot.

"With Copilot Studio, building AI assistants, co …

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]]> Jay Peters <![CDATA[Microsoft officially launches Loop, its Notion competitor]]> https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/15/23959801/microsoft-loop-launch-notion-competitor 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00 2023-11-15T11:00:00-05:00

Microsoft is officially launching its Notion-like productivity and collaboration app called Loop.

Loop lets you use flexible, collaborative workspaces and pages to make it easier to cooperate on work. If you're familiar with Notion's interface at all, Loop looks and feels remarkably similar - right down to the ability to easily access a bunch of tools and formatting options by typing the forward slash key (which pulls up what Microsoft calls the "insert menu").

A screenshot of Loop.

But because Loop is built by Microsoft, that means it has some useful integrations with other Microsoft software. For example, you can take parts of Loop pages and share them across …

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