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This year's Microsoft Build took place May 23–25 and focused largely on artificial intelligence, with new features and the CoPilot experience for Windows 11 and Edge, as well as new Bing AI and Copilot plugins for OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
In recent months, Microsoft has focused heavily on integrating generative AI into many of its products and services, including the Bing search engine, the Edge browser, GitHub, and the Office suite.
The Redmond giant also shows no signs of slowing down its work on this topic anytime soon. These developments will also be evident to a large extent in the Microsoft Dynamics 365 product family!
Since the release ofthe new AI-powered Bing earlier this year, Microsoft has reported that its users have engaged in more than half a billion chats and created more than 200 million images using the AI-powered Bing Image Creator. According to the company, daily downloads of the Bing mobile app have increased eightfold since its launch.
So what's new in MS Build for us? Here are the key topics that were presented during this year's conference:
Bing is now the default search engine for ChatGPT
At the Build 2023 conference, Microsoft confirmed its partnership with OpenAI. There was no doubt that Bing would eventually find a way to support 100 million monthly active users, but Microsoft highlighted this expansion at the developer conference.
OpenAI will begin using Bing as the default search engine for ChatGPT. The new search feature was made available to ChatGPT Plus users on May 23 and will soon be enabled for all free users via a dedicated plugin. Once implemented, ChatGPT users will gain a powerful new way to access the latest information from the web.
"The foundation of our progress with the new Bing is our fantastic partnership with OpenAI," says Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's chief of consumer marketing. ChatGPT will now have a world-class search engine built in to provide more timely and up-to-date answers with access to the Internet.
Extending Copilot with Plugins
Microsoft is committed to using the same open plugin standard that OpenAI uses for ChatGPT, thereby enabling interoperability between plugins for Bing Chat, the Microsoft Copilot platform, and ChatGPT. Developers now have access to a unified platform that allows them to create plugins compatible with ChatGPT, Bing, Dynamics 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Windows Copilot.
These plugins serve various purposes. One example is a plugin that can identify different types of real estate and, once we issue the appropriate command, it can help us find the right one in such a way that, after entering the necessary criteria related to the property we’re searching for, the search results will include only those that fully meet our criteria—which can significantly speed up and simplify the search process.
Another example is the use of the Instacartplugin. With it, for example, we can instruct ChatGPT to analyze a recipe page we provide and, based on that, generate the necessary shopping list for preparing the dish. Furthermore, after analyzing the resulting shopping list, we can identify which items on the list we already have, and in response, we’ll receive only those items that we actually need to purchase, as shown in the illustration below:
Thanks to the introduction of plugin support in Bing, the search engine can seamlessly integrate with a wide variety of services.
Plugins that have already been announced include Wolfram, Alpha, and OpenTable. Microsoft also revealed plans to add plugins such as Expedia, Instacart, Kayak, Klarna, Redfin, TripAdvisor, and Zillow to Bing. In addition, Bing Chat will soon include plugins for Bandsintown, Bohita, Cloudflare, Coupert, Fareportal, FiscalNote, Golden, Lexi Shopper, Likewise, Notable, One Word Domains, PromptPerfect, Shopify, Skyscanner, Spotify, Trip.com, and Spotnana.
Windows Copilot
The new Windows Copilot tool is located in the Windows sidebar, and just like Microsoft’s Bing AI chatbot, we can use it as a highly efficient search engine by entering general questions. As its name suggests, it is also deeply integrated with Windows.
We can ask it to perform tasks within the operating system—such as turning on night mode or changing the desktop background—without having to search for specific settings. Windows Copilot can also act as a true virtual assistant, summarizing documents or launching a photo-editing app to make a few changes just before sending it to a group of colleagues.
Copilot in Business Central
The field of artificial intelligence, which is constantly evolving and becoming increasingly widespread, has also made its way into the Business Central system.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot enables system users to perform their daily work with state-of-the-art artificial intelligence at their side. With Copilot in Business Central, Microsoft customers can provide their employees with intuitive AI tools so they can get more done with less effort, without requiring them to have specialized knowledge of data analytics.
Version 2023 Wave 1introduced the first Copilot feature: AI-generated product descriptions, adding to our catalog of AI-powered features such as cash flow forecasting and payment delay prediction.
Microsoft Fabric
Microsoft Fabric is a new application that can be described as a data analytics platform. It is likely one of the biggest data-related product announcements from the software giant since SQL Server. Microsoft Fabric is designed to retrieve data from Microsoft’s OneLake database, Amazon S3, and soon even Google Cloud. The platform combines Power BI, Data Factory, and the next generation of Synapse. It also offers features such as data integration, storage, and analysis, as well as business analytics. In addition, Microsoft Fabric now includes the Copilot solution, which will soon be available in preview.
To sum up the Microsoft Build conference, we can safely say that the development of artificial intelligence—as integrated into the tools we use every day—is the hottest topic. We eagerly await to see how this development will unfold and what new features Microsoft has in store for us.
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