Microsoft is currently holding its annual developer conference, Build 2024 in Seattle. While the event is centered on AI PCs and Windows 11 on Arm, Microsoft has also made a handful of announcements around its AI efforts, particularly in its Microsoft Azure cloud service. The tech giant says the new advances in Azure will help users build “transformational” AI experiences, further stating, “there’s never been a more exciting time to be a developer.” Right off the bat, Microsoft has announced that its Azure AI Studio has finally shipped to broad availability. For context, Azure AI Studio is an important pro-code tool that allows developers to build custom Copilot apps while simultaneously promising responsible and safe development. The platform also features a user-friendly interface coupled with code-first capabilities, including AZD and AI Toolkit for VS Code to promote effectiveness and efficiency. Last week, OpenAI announced its new flagship GPT-4o model with “GPT-4-level intelligence.” The new model was already available in preview in Azure OpenAI Service, allowing developers to use the service to integrate GPT technology into apps. And now, Microsoft has announced that the model is available as an API in Azure AI Studio. Devs can now leverage its capabilities to integrate text, image, and audio processing into a single model. When coupled with the recently enabled GPT-4 Turbo with Vision, developers can build apps with inputs and outputs that space across text, images, and more for a richer user experience.

Full report : Microsoft ships Azure AI Studio in broad availability, adds support for OpenAI’s GPT-4o, and announces a new multimodal model in its lightweight Phi-3 family.