Microsoft Build highlights: Phi-3-vision, Team Copilot, and more announced

Microsoft's developers-oriented event focused on artificial intelligence integration across its platforms and services

A day after announcing Copilot+ PCs platform and artificial intelligence-powered Windows on Arm, Microsoft unveiled an array of new products and features at its Build 2024 event. While most of the announcements at the event were directed towards developers, there were a few that can bring new experiences to Windows for consumers. These include a new multimodal version of Microsoft’s small language model (SLM) Phi-3 and more AI integration into the Microsoft Edge browser. Here are the details:

Phi-3-Vision

Microsoft introduced a new multimodal AI model within its range of small scaled Phi-3 models. The Phi-3-vision SLM, Microsoft said, has the ability to process texts and images while its responses are limited to texts. Being a small scaled model, the Phi-3-vision is capable of processing data locally on-device. The latest multimodal SLM model has a parameter range of 4.2 billion. During the launch, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadela said that the model has a hybrid nature – it can be deployed on-device when the hardware required for it is available and falls back to cloud when not.

 

The Phi-3-Vision model is available as a preview in Azure AI Playground and Azure AI Studio for developers.

Team Copilot

Microsoft said that the new Team Copilot is an expansion of the AI-powered chatbot for Microsoft 365. Similar to how Google’s new Gemini Teammate integrates with its Workspace apps, Team Copilot works across Microsoft productivity apps such as Teams, Loop, Planner, and more. The AI agent for Microsoft 365 can handle automated tasks such as facilitating meetings, managing agenda, tracking time and taking notes. The AI chatbot can also surface in chats without any prompt and surface  important information, tracking action items and addressing unresolved issues.

The company said that the Team Copilot will be available for preview later this year with more features.

Real-time video translation in Edge

Microsoft Edge browser is set to get an AI-powered video translation feature, which will be able to translate videos from YouTube, LinkedIn, Reuters, and Coursera in real time. According to a report by The Verge, the feature works with only select languages, offering translation from English to Hindi, German, Spanish, Italian, and Russian. As per the report, the feature will be available soon and will get support for more languages and video-streaming platforms in the future.