Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman to run a new consumer AI unit called Microsoft AI. Suleyman is one of Google DeepMind's cofounders and chief executive of AI startup Inflection. Microsoft AI will combine consumer-facing products like Copilot, Bing, and Edge into one team. Microsoft will hire most of Inflection's staff, including AI engineers, researchers, and large language model builders. Inflection will switch its focus from its consumer chatbot to selling enterprise AI software to businesses.

Unnamed sources say that Microsoft is paying approximately $650 million in its deal with Inflection AI. $620 million was paid for non-exclusive licensing fees for Inflection's technology and $30 million was paid to get Inflection to agree not to sue over Microsoft's poaching. Inflection will pivot away from building a personalized AI chatbot to becoming an AI studio that helps other companies work with large language model AI. Microsoft has several reasons for needing a backup for OpenAI - for one, its deal with OpenAI is being scrutinized by the FTC.

Garnet is a remote cache store that offers strong performance, scalability, storage, recovery, cluster sharding, key migration, and replication features. It works with existing Redis clients and can handle multi-key transactions. Garnet has a fast pluggable network design for high end-to-end performance. It can reduce costs for large services.

Microsoft's new specifications for OEMs building AI PCs includes a requirement that they must have a Copilot key. To be recognized as an AI PC, OEM partners must also provide a combination of hardware and software including a Neural Processing Unit (NPU), the latest CPUs and GPUs, and access to Copilot. It is unclear what OEMs will get in return for adhering to Microsoft's AI PC definition. Intel recognizes some laptops without the Copilot key as AI PCs due to their integrated NPUs.

Microsoft is planning to build a $100 billion supercomputer called Stargate to power OpenAI's next generation of artificial intelligence systems. Stargate could take up several hundred acres of land and require up to 5 gigawatts of power. The facility could open as soon as 2028. Its creation is largely dependent on whether OpenAI can deliver its next major AI upgrade, which is reportedly due in early 2025.

Microsoft will unveil its vision for AI PCs at an event in Seattle on May 20. The company is confident that its new Arm-powered Windows laptops will beat Apple's M3-powered MacBook Air in both CPU performance and AI-accelerated tasks. The laptops will feature Snapdragon X Elite processors from Qualcomm. Microsoft is planning to ship consumer models of its Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 with Snapdragon X Elite processors instead of the Intel Core Ultra processors that the business-focused versions have.

Microsoft will unveil its vision for AI PCs at an event in Seattle on May 20. The company is confident that its new Arm-powered Windows laptops will beat Apple's M3-powered MacBook Air in both CPU performance and AI-accelerated tasks. The laptops will feature Snapdragon X Elite processors from Qualcomm. Microsoft is planning to ship consumer models of its Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 with Snapdragon X Elite processors instead of the Intel Core Ultra processors that the business-focused versions have.

Microsoft will unveil its vision for AI PCs at an event in Seattle on May 20. The company is confident that its new Arm-powered Windows laptops will beat Apple's M3-powered MacBook Air in both CPU performance and AI-accelerated tasks. The laptops will feature Snapdragon X Elite processors from Qualcomm. Microsoft is planning to ship consumer models of its Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 with Snapdragon X Elite processors instead of the Intel Core Ultra processors that the business-focused versions have.

Microsoft has released an Orca math word problems dataset. This was used to train some of the current state-of-the-art math models. It can now be used for research by the community.

Microsoft's €15 million investment in French AI firm Mistral while continuing its strong partnership with OpenAI illustrates its strategy to diversify and bolster Azure's AI offerings and gain a foothold in the European market ahead of the EU's AI Act. Azure aims to become a model garden, offering a variety of AI models to attract developers and compete with other cloud services. The Mistral deal also positions Microsoft strategically within European AI regulatory frameworks.

The powerful DeepSpeed training library from Microsoft has an update that allows models to use 6 bits per parameter. This can speed up inference well over 2x.

Microsoft is defending OpenAI against The New York Times' copyright infringement lawsuit, arguing the case is based on unfounded claims and comparing the dispute to past technological advancements like the VCR.

The Artificial Intelligence Controller Interface (AICI) lets you build controllers that constrain and direct outputs of large language models in real time.

AI advancement poses a significant threat to the adtech industry, with its ability to filter out ads, potentially reducing the $1 trillion in annual revenue that companies like Google, Meta, and TikTok currently enjoy. This series explores how AI disrupts the crucial ad inventory by appealing to consumers' desire for ad-free content and questions the stability of Big Tech's business models. The analysis delves into AI's effects on ad consumption, which has implications for major players like OpenAI, Microsoft, Apple, Meta, and Alphabet.

Microsoft is planning an AI-focused event on May 20th featuring CEO Satya Nadella, who will discuss the company's AI vision in hardware and software.

Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly planning a joint data center project that could reach $100 billion in cost, culminating in the launch of a massive AI supercomputer named “Stargate” by 2028.

Microsoft is testing a new AI-powered Xbox chatbot designed to automate support tasks, expanding its testing pool and integrating the bot with Xbox's support documents to answer queries and process game refunds.

TypeSpec, an API definition language developed at Microsoft, offers a more concise and readable way to write OpenAPI compared to JSON or YAML. Drawing from TypeScript's syntax, it addresses OpenAPI's verbosity and lack of reusable components by allowing the definition of API patterns as reusable components, thus simplifying code generation and governance at scale. TypeSpec's flexibility and productivity enhancements could make API-first development practices more appealing.

Microsoft is collaborating with OpenAI to develop sound recognition AI capable of detecting natural disasters by analyzing environmental sounds. The newly patented technology processes sound signals through a neural network, providing alerts for events like earthquakes and home intrusions. This AI integration could enhance the capabilities of applications like Copilot and ChatGPT, particularly for Windows users.

Microsoft will create a consumer AI division to consolidate its artificial intelligence efforts and enhance user experiences across its products, including its Copilot chatbot, Bing search, and Edge browser. Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Inflection AI and DeepMind AI, will be the CEO of the new unit.

Microsoft wants to make generative AI applications more secure and trustworthy with new tools in Azure AI that help product builders deal with prompt injection attacks, hallucinations, and content risks. These include Prompt Shields to detect and block direct and indirect prompt injection attacks, Groundedness Detection to identify text-based hallucinations, and Safety System Message Templates to help mitigate misuse and harmful content. Azure AI Studio lets organizations measure an AI application's susceptibility to many threats.

Microsoft has launched a global AI-driven advertising solution that simplifies workflows, boosts efficiency, and expands audience reach. PMAX acts as a virtual assistant, automating mundane tasks, optimizing ad performance, and honing in on the most relevant users across various Microsoft platforms. This guide provides step-by-step instructions for setting up PMAX campaigns and offers insights into user adoption and experiences.

Microsoft is injecting pop-up ads into Google Chrome to push users to switch to Bing, a move reminiscent of previous malware-like notifications. Despite assurances of choice, Windows users are frustrated with Microsoft's aggressive promotion tactics. There is currently no easy way to opt out permanently.

A documentary on how governments across Europe are reliant on Microsoft software, which can be seen as a conflict of interest.

Google's new AI chip, Cloud TPU v5p, is now available. It boasts nearly triple the training speed for large language models compared to its predecessor, TPU v4. This release underscores Google's position in the AI hardware race alongside competitors like Nvidia. Google has also introduced the Google Axion CPU, based on Arm's chip infrastructure, promising better performance and energy efficiency.

Microsoft has announced the commencement of ad testing within the Start menu on Windows 11, utilizing the Recommended section to propose apps from the Microsoft Store. Restricted to Windows Insiders in the Beta Channel in the US, feedback from testers will determine whether these ads become a permanent fixture in Windows 11. There is an option to turn off the ads in the settings.

Aptos Ascend is primarily geared toward financial institutions requiring compliance and security.

Microsoft has released a set of GPU accelerated kernels for training BitNet style models. These models have substantially lower memory cost without much drop in accuracy.

Microsoft has open-sourced the original source code for MS-DOS v1.25, v2.0, and v4.0.

An email sent to Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella by Kevin Scott, Microsoft's chief technology officer with the subject line 'Thoughts on OpenAI' in mid-June 2019 detailed Scott's concerns about Google's developments in AI and how it might take Microsoft multiple years to even attempt to compete with Google. Microsoft had tried to keep the email hidden, but it was made public as part of the US Justice Department's antitrust trial over Google's alleged search monopoly. Mere weeks after the email, Microsoft had invested $1 billion into OpenAI, and it has increased its investment significantly further since.