Microsoft Build 2023 was all about AI and a Bing-ChatGPT tango. Key takeaways

In the last nine years since taking over as the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella has transformed the company into one of the most successful tech giants in the world. And one major reason for the company's success has been its futuristic approach in the last few years.

This was quite evident during Microsoft Build 2023, company annual conference event, during which the focus was mostly on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and integrating it with Microsoft's products.

Competing with Google in the era of AI revolution, Microsoft on Tuesday (May 23) launched Azure AI Studio, announced that Bing is now ChatGPT's default search engine, and made available new AI features for Windows 11.

There were many other announcements made during the event after which CEO Satya Nadella delivered a keynote speech. We take a look at the key takeaways from Microsoft Build 2023:

Bing integrates With ChatGPT

One of the most important announcement during the event was integration of Bing with OpenAI's ChatGPT. The company said that OpenAI will start using Bing as the default search engine and the functionality has been made available to ChatGPT Plus users. It will be enabled for all free ChatGPT users soon through a plug-in in ChatGPT.

This will help ChatGPT to offer timely and up-to-date answers making the chatbot even more effective. "ChatGPT will now have a world-class search engine built-in to provide timelier and more up-to-date answers with access from the web," said Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's head of consumer marketing, in a blog post.

Just like how Bing's chat experience is powered by GPT-4 and uses citations to links, OpenAI's ChatGPT AI chatbot will include search and web data that also includes citations, reported The Verge. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it is investing $10 billion in OpenAI.

AI assistant for Windows 11

Microsoft also introduced Windows Copilot, making Windows 11 the first PC platform to announce centralized AI assistance for customers. Invoking Windows Copilot is easy and the button is front and center on your taskbar. Once open, the Windows Copilot side bar stays consistent across your apps, programs and windows, always available to act as your personal assistant.

It will help you customize your settings and seamlessly connect across your favorite apps. The simple tasks like copy-pasting, snipping pictures, and writing will getter with Windows Copilot. You ask Windows Copilot to rewrite, summarize or explain your content.

You can ask Windows Copilot a range of questions just like you do with ChatGPT. So if you want to calling someone in another country, you can check the local time to make sure you are not waking them up in the middle of the night. The AI assistant will also help you plan a trip, find flights and accommodations among other tasks.

Windows Copilot will start to become available in preview for Windows 11 in June.

Microsoft Fabric

During the annual event, the tech company also launched Microsoft Fabric, a new end-to-end data and analytics platform. In th era of AI, Fabric will provide an integrated and simplified experience. Microsoft says that it is price-effective and easy-to-manage modern analytics solution.

Microsoft is integrating Copilot in Microsoft Fabric to enable the use of natural language (human language) and a chat experience to generate code and queries and create AI plugins without using any machine language. With AI-driven insights, customers can tell the data story and let Copilot do the heavy lifting, the company said.

The company promises that Fabric will increase productivity like never before as it includes data integration, data engineering, data warehousing, data science, real-time analytics, applied observability and business intelligence.

AI Plugins

Microsoft announced that it will adopt the same open plugin standard that OpenAI introduced for ChatGPT, enabling interoperability across ChatGPT and the breadth of Microsoft's copilot offerings.

The company said that developers can now use one platform to build plugins that work across both consumer and business surfaces, including ChatGPT, Bing, Dynamics 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot.

If users want to develop and use their own plugins with their AI app built on Azure OpenAI Service it will, by default, be interoperable with this same plugin standard. This means developers can build experiences that enable people to interact with their apps without using any machine language.

Azure AI Studio

During Microsoft's AI-focussed event, the tech company also announced Azure AI Studio which will help companies build their own ChatGPT-like platforms with their own text, images and data.

Azure Machine Learning will drastically improve machine learning professionals' ability to operationalize responsible generative AI solutions by enabling evaluation at all phases of the model lifecycle, Microsoft said.

"In our Azure AI Studio, we're making it easy for developers to ground Azure OpenAI Service models on their data … and do that securely without seeing that data or having to train a model on the data." John Montgomery, Microsoft's CVP of AI platform, told TechCrunch.