Microsoft promotes more tools for creating AI software

CEO Satya Nadella pushed new application programming interfaces, or APIs, that facilitate developers' access to Microsoft's artificial intelligence (AI) technology at a developer conference in Seattle.

Github Copilot, Microsoft's generative AI tool that makes computer programmers more productive, is reportedly used by 1.8 million engineers, according to the company.

At his Build conference keynote, Nadella stated, "As I reflect on the past year, what strikes me is how you all as developers have taken all of these capabilities and are applying them, quite frankly, to change the world around us."

Microsoft revealed new capabilities for its Copilot AI program, which enhances business productivity apps like Teams, which is a video and text chat platform.

Alphabet’s Google announced a similar set of AI capabilities to assist users with office applications last week at its developer conference. The new developer tools from Microsoft were shown last week.

After reaching a record high of $432.97 earlier in the session, Microsoft's shares were up 1.2% at $430.67 on Tuesday afternoon. So far in 2024, Microsoft's stock has increased by 14%.

Microsoft said last Thursday that it will provide its cloud computing clients with an AMD AI processor platform to rival Nvidia, whose graphics processing units have evolved into the industry standard for AI computing. This announcement was also directed towards developers.

Microsoft's AMD chip platform connects the processors via Infiniband, a networking technology developed by Nvidia.

According to Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Kevin Scott, developers may include OpenAI's new GPT4-o model, which operates on Microsoft's infrastructure, into their product for 12 times less money than they could have with previous versions of the technology.

The biggest investor in OpenAI, Microsoft incorporates some of the heavyweight's technology into its products.

Microsoft unveiled a range of Copilot+ desktops on Monday that include artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities like the ability to search through previous user activities in almost any program. Qualcomm Arm-based CPUs are used in the latest PCs.