Microsoft will announce new Windows and cloud AI features in May

Microsoft's Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella (CEO) told analysts in January that 2024 is the year “AI becomes part of the first class of all PCs,” and the schedule of the conference Microsoft will hold in May reflects that goal. Microsoft has reported a significant increase in revenue from clients running AI models on the Azure public cloud, and the company wants to maintain this trend by deploying new AI functions for developers.

Mustafa Suleiman, the new person in charge of Microsoft AI, will be on stage with Nadella and other long-time executives during the keynote address of the show to be held in Seattle. Suleiman, the co-founder of DeepMind, an AI startup acquired by Google in 2014, joined Microsoft from the startup Inflection AI last month.

People trying to get the most out of the Windows operating system have been able to install PowerToys, an open source bundle of utilities including image resizing widgets and keyboard shortcut customization programs, for years. Microsoft plans to explain in Build a new Advanced Paste function that uses an AI model that operates directly on a PC rather than sending data to the cloud and receiving a response.

According to an explanation in one session, software makers will also talk about new AI functions that “enable users to interact more deeply with their digital lives on Windows.” Developers will be able to integrate these functions into Windows applications.

As part of this strategy, Microsoft announced in March a Surface PC equipped with a Copilot button that allows quick access to the company's chatbots. These machines are equipped with Intel processors. Since many years ago, Microsoft has been working to improve the user experience of Windows PCs by installing chips with excellent energy efficiency with the Arm architecture instead of the standard x86 model adopted by Intel. Microsoft plans to explain in Build how Windows applications can use Arm-based neural processing engines (NPUs) for artificial intelligence.

Organizations that are building their own chatbots in Azure AI Studio will hear about new features related to AI safety.

Microsoft is also trying to make Azure easier to use overall. The company also plans to talk about feature enhancements built into the Copilot chatbot that can be accessed on Azure.