Microsoft AI - Generative, Trusted and much more!

With all the news around AI, in particular Generative AI and the use of large language models to summarise text, create content, etc. it's easy to forget that AI has been around for a long time and at Microsoft we've been doing this for a long time.

Machine learning models that look for patterns in data for example, have been around for many years. Similar for AI that does object detection, handwriting recognition, etc.

Even generative AI isn't new; however, we now have the computational power to do this at scale and to make it available to pretty much everyone - that is new.

AI for everyone, doing this at scale, making it easy and truly secure and trusted is what I'm discussing here.

Microsoft's Approach is Different

What I love about Microsoft's approach to AI and the same can be said for data and other services, is that we make it available to you in different ways to suit your needs and you don't lose control of your data as we don't rely on 3rd party services to do this.

For example, we have a generative, large language model service that you can point at your data in Azure and utilise in your own applications and/or you can point Microsoft applications at that same model.

If you just want to use the AI services that we have embedded into our various application offerings you can do that also, no training required, point it at a data source or for those services that just utilise the data in a Microsoft product such as Dynamics 365, just give it a job to do and away it goes...

This is incredibly useful (for example) when you are building a new bot. I no longer need to train it to answer all of the possible questions a user may ask; your content becomes the answers to questions and the inbuilt generative AI service takes care of the rest.

You build the bot, ground it to your source of choice and immediately you can start asking questions of the data.

Imagine the increase in customer deflection rates with something as simple as this!

This is just one example of how we at Microsoft are bringing AI to you in a very easy to consume way.

We also have AI helping you build apps, create emails, build integrations, etc. etc.

We call these services copilots, and they are embedded throughout the Microsoft application stack.

Copilots are focused on employee productivity and doing this at scale in a trusted and secure way.

You have choice with Microsoft though, the AI models you build and train yourself and utilise as services or the AI services we deliver to you as copilots and controls (widgets) or a combination of all of these.

Beyond Generative AI

I started this article by saying that AI has been around for a long time, which it has. So whilst the buzz around generative AI is certainly warranted, I also wanted to bring attention to the many other AI models we have at Microsoft.

We have some awesome capabilities such as Prediction Modelling for large data sets. Use this to generate leads or next best action based upon predicting customer behaviour.

Perhaps stop a churn before it happens?

We also have some amazing capabilities that can greatly improve Straight Through Processing (STP), for example, Document Processing.

Did you know you can train a model to take a form completed by hand and to extract data from that form? It will literally convert handwriting into text that you can persist into your database of choice.

This type of AI capabilities can greatly improve the time it takes to approve a loan, process payments, KYC and AML checking... as well as reducing errors due to rekeying of data.

I urge you to give this a try, it really is incredible!

As with Generative AI, access to these other AI models comes in 2 forms. You can utilise these as services in Azure or you can leverage these within the Microsoft suite of products.

We've even made the process of training these models very accessible!

Where the Rubber Hits the Road

For me, the true joy of great technology is when it positively affects a business outcome.

Having a great AI model is one thing, but how do I infuse the insight it creates, or the labour savings it produces into the business tools my employees or customers utilise every day?

This is the beauty of the Microsoft approach.

Build models for different use cases and utilise anywhere you would like.

Data insights are propagated in Azure, so they can be immediately consumed by Business Applications that can do something useful with them - no integration or data movement required. For example, instantly trigger a marketing journey.

And of course, we are doing this for you with the copilots we are embedding into all of our business applications.

All trusted and highly secure because it's Microsoft and Azure.