Remember when software wasn’t connected to the internet? In a few years, this will also apply to software that doesn’t have an intelligent co-pilot assistant, according to Microsoft chief technology officer Kevin Scott.
Using state-of-the-art AI and large-scale language models, Copilot can perform complex tasks ranging from crafting sales pitches and reporting missed meetings to generating images for presentations and planning themed dinner parties. An application that assists in cognitive tasks.
Microsoft introduced the Copilot concept about two years ago with GitHub Copilot, an AI pair programmer to help developers code. This year, Microsoft is launching Copilot across its core products and services, from Bing’s AI-powered chat that is changing the way people search the internet, to Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot X, Dynamics 365 Copilot, Microsoft Viva’s Copilot, and Microsoft Security. Expanded experience. Co-pilot.
Today, at its annual build developer conference, Microsoft is expanding its ecosystem of Microsoft Copilots with Copilot for Power BI and Copilot for Power Pages in preview, Copilot for Microsoft Fabric coming in preview soon, and launching. Announced the inclusion of Windows Copilot. Previews will be available in June. The company also introduced new features to help developers build their own co-pilots and next-generation AI applications. This includes new tools called plugins that make Copilot more useful by allowing it to interact with other software and services.
“You may look at Bing Chat and think this is pretty magical and complicated, but Microsoft provides everything developers need to build their own co-pilot. ‘ said Scott. “In the next few years, I think this will be the expectation of how all software will behave.”
Expanding the plugin ecosystem
OpenAI introduced the ChatGPT plugin in March. Microsoft announced his plugin for Bing earlier this month. This technology enables ChatGPT and Bing Chat to search and book restaurant reservations, for example, using the OpenTable plugin.
Microsoft is now adopting the same open plugin standard. It was introduced by OpenAI to ChatGPT to enable interoperability between ChatGPT and Microsoft’s extensive range of Copilot products. So that developers can use his one platform to build plugins that work on both business and consumer his surfaces such as ChatGPT, Bing, Dynamics 365 Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Windows Copilot, etc. became. Microsoft also announced that it will bring Bing as the default search experience to ChatGPT.
As part of this shared plugin platform, Bing is adding support for plugins. In addition to those previously announced for OpenTable and Wolfram Alpha, the Bing ecosystem will also include Expedia, Instacart, Kayak, Klarna, Redfin, TripAdvisor and Zillow.
Additionally, developers will be able to extend Microsoft 365 Copilot with plugins. Plugins for Microsoft 365 include ChatGPT and Bing plugins, as well as Teams messaging extensions and Power Platform connectors, allowing developers to leverage their existing investments. Developers will also be able to easily build new plugins using the Microsoft Teams Toolkit for Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio.
How the plugin works
At Build, the company showcased an AI development framework that helps developers build their own co-pilots. The stack includes plugins that enhance the capabilities of AI systems by enabling them to retrieve real-time information, incorporate corporate or other business data, perform new types of calculations, and perform safe actions on behalf of users. includes support for
At its core, think of plugins as bridges. This could be a bridge between large-scale language models trained on public data from the internet and all the data companies hold privately on their merits. This plugin is a bridge that allows the co-pilot to access these files when answering questions from company employees.
Similarly, the plugin acts as a bridge between a large language model and the website or back-end system that the company uses to book business trips, allowing co-pilots to map sales reps’ trips to San Francisco. You will be able to make arrangements according to the regulations. Company travel policy.
“A plug-in is a way for you, the co-pilot developer, to give the co-pilot or the AI system a function that is not currently manifested, connect it to data, and connect it to the system you are building. ,” Scott said. . “I think we will end up with an incredibly rich ecosystem of plugins.”
Expanding the plugin ecosystem
Developers can also create, test, and deploy their own plugins in a variety of ways, eventually deploying them for use on Microsoft Copilots, or the functionality of their own applications built with generative AI technology. can be strengthened.
For example, a developer at a large company wants Microsoft 365 Copilot to access the company’s contracts with customers and vendors to ask questions about how certain legal matters have been handled in the past. There may be To do this, the developer needs to connect her Microsoft 365 Copilot to a private database of legal files. To do that, documents must be encoded, indexed, and stored in a way that allows them to be searched.
“It’s a pattern of how we load information into the model,” said John Montgomery, corporate vice president of AI platform program management at Microsoft. “That’s where plugins come in. What they do is say, ‘I want to make that pattern reusable and set boundaries on how it can be used.'”
Microsoft is releasing a set of features that make it easier to create plugins that work across Copilot surfaces. For example, Visual Studio Code, GitHub Copilot, and GitHub Codespaces make it easy for developers to create, debug, and deploy new plugins, and Azure AI runs and tests plugins against private enterprise data. Added the function to Once you create these plugins, they work across Microsoft’s Copilot experience.
