Microsoft Build 2024 announcements — Surface Pro 11, Surface Laptop 7, Copilot+ PCs, huge AI upgrades and latest news

What was announced yesterday?

Let's start by looking back. It was a busy day for Microsoft, as the company made a ton of hardware and software announcements.

Surface Pro 11: Looks like the Pro 10 is staying exclusive to the business people, and we're getting the good stuff in the Surface Pro 11. This is the first Surface to give you an OLED display, and you can pick from either a Snapdragon X Plus or X Elite. Pricing starts at $999.

Surface Laptop 7: Alongside this, the Surface Laptop 7 is a more modest upgrade hardware-wise. You're still getting the same display options as Laptop 6, and the same aluminum shell. The main difference is that Snapdragon choice.

Copilot+ PCs: These are only just two of what Microsoft is touting the new line of Copilot+ PCs — the next generation AI PCs. You can see more about what Asus, Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo have up their sleeves for this.

Welcome back to Redmond

We're just under 30 minutes away from the main event. Look forward to a ton of AI updates, Windows 11 features and more from Satya Nadella and co!

P.S. I can only wish I could pull off an alien dress like hers!

YouTube live translation and dubbing is coming to Microsoft Edge

Yes, I know Edge is that annoying browser pop up we get on the way to downloading Google Chrome. But Microsoft has been busy updating it significantly, including this great move in accessibility.

This new feature will offer real-time video translations to sites like YouTube, Linkedin and more — pretty much any site with on-site video. Translations include going from English to  44 languages. And yes, that includes both prerecorded and live videos.

What we have here is huge for those who are deaf or hard of hearing, and a big step forward in international audience for your content. 

Five minutes to go...

Currently, we're celebrating the Imagine Cup finalists — an amazing mix of creativity and accessible design, and the winner is... From Your Eyes!

Using vision AI, it is able to tell you in real-time what can be seen in front of you. Lovely stuff!

Hey, all! Tony Polanco here to cover the main event! I'll be with you for the next few hours to give you the latest news, so sit back and relax!

Microsoft Build 2024 officially kicks off! The event starts with a look at Microsoft's past and leads into its present/future which will be focused on AI programs and tools. This can be seen as an extension of the company's desire to bring people together.

Satya Nadella takes the stage to usher in Microsoft Build!

Like the intro, Microsoft's CEO talks about Microsoft's past and how that is informing its future. Even if the mission statement remains the same, we now have new tools to make people's lives easier. That's the promise of AI.

Nadella talks about what drives progress in computers. We used to have Moore's Law, but things seem to have scaled faster than even Moore could have predicted.

Nadella talks about the possible avenues that AI can open for people around the world. According to him, developers are excited over the prospect of AI-driven technologies. He thanks them for the impact their progress is having on the world.

Moving on to discuss Copilot+ PC. The idea is to make Windows the best platform to build AI applications. A host of Copilot Library tools will be available to developers. This includes Phi-Silica, which can run on-device. 

PyTorch and Web Neural Network will now run natively on Windows. That should give developers even more tools to make use of. A processor's NPU should help these tools perform faster than ever.

Nadella talks up AI infrastructure.

Azure is available in 60+ regions. The company has expanded it to even more regions than ever, with the promise to deliver cloud service sustainability.

Some of this might be a bit over the heads of regular folks. But suffice it to say that if developers can create applications that help you life easier, then we all win.

Nadella talks about Microsoft's partnership with Nvidia, which apparently forms the core of Microsoft's AI ambitions. The companies are utilizing LLMs like ChatGPT and others to incorporate them natively into machines.

Microsoft also plans to use AMD's ND MI300X V5 hardware to fuel its AI ambitions. The company isn't leaving Team Red behind!

Nadella talks about Azure AI. Apparently, over 50,000 organizations use the program. ChatGPT-4o was trained on Azure, which is pretty interesting. Microsoft really does have its hands into many AI pies!

We now see a demo of AI giving a player pointers on how to play Minecraft. Instead of looking up a YouTube video, you'll be able to have AI guide you. I'm not sure how I feel about this as a long-time gamer raised on GameFAQs. But I guess this could be a modern version of old game guides!

Next up we have a demo of a person asking AI the best products to use for camping. This is standard fare for AI, but obviously, instead of typing in questions, you can ask it questions with your voice. The presentation showed the user change his language and the AI kept up, which is pretty cool.

OpenAI created ChatGPT-40 and Microsoft is opening it up to devs. This will make it an AI agent too. Very interesting!

Microsoft is also adding more models to Phi-3 with expanded parameters. It can work via the cloud or locally on a machine.

A video of how AI can help teachers make classes more engaging through Khan Academy. This should help give students a personal tutor and teachers a personal assistant. This is possible via the Phi platform. And since this is a small AI platform, it will cost less -- which should make it affordable to schools.

Azure AI studio is now available to all developers.

Real-time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric. There's a lot here to sort through, but suffice it to say it's yet another AI tool made to help developers and organizations ease their workload. Admittedly, this isn't something regular folks need to worry about.

More talk about developer tools, which is Microsoft's forte. Again, this is likely above most of your heads (it's certainly above my paygrade), but the developers in the audience seem excited.

Neha Batra VP of Engineering takes the stage to demonstrate GitHub Copilot. She speaks in Spanish and gets answers to her coding question in real time. Impressive!

More Microsoft Copilot updates. Nadella talks up how the company's AI companion has helped enterprise since it launched. Microsoft Copilot connectors allows companies to connect numerous disperate applications.

Team Copilot has been announced. This will work in Teams and other Microsoft programs. It can facilitate meetings, take notes, write chats, gather information, address issues, and even act as a project manager. 

Developers can build a Copilot from the ground up or from a series of templates. This should help devs and organizations create a Copilot agent for their specific business.

Nadella is now talking about security, which is a big concern when it comes to AI.

Nadella leaves the stage and we see a sizzle reel of how audio descriptions can help those with disabilities. This is one of the more benevolent uses of AI and it's good to see Microsoft highlight this aspect.

Rajesh Jha, EVP of Experiences, now takes the stage. He and other presenters will discuss different aspect of AI Copilot.

Jha speaks about how AI has been incorporated into Microsoft 365 apps. Many companies are also making use of Copilot. Over 150 Copilot have been added since the beginning of 2024. There's also a standalone Copilot app for everyday users.

Jha shows various ways to use Copilot. This is the usual kind of AI demo we've seen plenty of times before. Copilot scans Jha's conversation and creates a summary. It also helps him create a document to present to his team.

More talk about using Copilot agents. Through this, devs and companies can create a personalized for their business. It will remember (or recall) previous data to provide up-to-date information based on what it has "learned."

Lumen is using Microsoft Copilot 365 to streamline how it sells products to customers. Again, this is something that regular folks might not find interesting but it does show how versatile Copilot can be.

Jeff Teper, President of collaborated apps & platform, takes the stage to talk Copilot extensions.

Taper goes into a demo of how Copilot extensions work. During the demo, he shows how to create a custom Copilot. Basically, he takes information from one program and brings it to another. It appears rather seamless.

Wolters Kluwer has built a Copilot to save its customers time when they're creating an order. Like the previous demo, this all seems rather seamless. Right now, this is all for enterprise (business) users.

Taper continues demoing how Copilot is helping different businesses streamline things via the AI assistant. All of this is launching today for Microsoft 365 for enterprise.

Pavan Davuluri, CVP of Windows + Devices, takes the stage.

He discusses Copilot+ PCs, which Microsoft announced yesterday. This is the same sizzle reel we saw yesterday shortly before the company announced the new Surface Pro 11 and Surface Laptop 7.

Xbox wants to use Copilot to help players during difficult sections of a game. Game developers can also use Copilot to help them create games.

DirectML is another tool developers can use. Native PyTorch support is also coming. Nvidia is heping to make this happen. WebNN on Windows is another native machine learning tool for devs.

Windows volumetric apps are coming to Meta Quest. Basically, this lets devs create AR apps for Meta Quest they can use. Pretty neat!

It appears that day 1 of build is coming to a close. We get one final video featuring the company Amgen and how it uses Copilot for its business.

We get a look back at Microsoft Build 2023. It shows the company's AI journey over time and how the tool is helping Microsoft attempt to make people's lives better.

Kevin Scott, CTO EVP of AI, takes the stage as he did last year. Guess this party isn't over yet! He discusses how gratifying it is to see what devs are doing with Microsoft's AI tools.

Scott talks about how Etsy is using AI to help people shop. He also talks about a partnership between Microsoft and Cognition which is meant to create tools for developers.

Scott talks about what is driving this AI wave. He feels this technology is driving technological changes. Platforms like Copilot are the key to push AI progress forward through its various stacks.

Microsoft is building the toolkits for devs while "pushing the frontier forward." One such way is by incorporating ChatGPT-4o into Copilot. The multimodal input and output feature makes interacting with AI agents feel more natural.

We see a demo of someone using ChatGPT-4o to help them make sure all the code they've written is correct. This isn't a real-time demo, but even if it's staged, it's a decent demo of how multimodal AI works. Pretty cool stuff!

Scott discusses how Phi-3 uses SLMs (small language models) to help users. We see how ChatGPT evolved from GPT-3.5 to GTP-4... and now GPT-4o. Phi isn't as powerful as GPT but it can have similar usage. It can even run on smartphones.

Sal Khan from Khan Academy takes the stage with Kevin Scott to discuss his company's AI tool and how it helps students. He had an idea to create a digital tutor and GPT 4 allowed him to make that a reality. The tool had to be created in a way that was appropriate for students.

Scott talks about some health issues his mom has faced. He believes if there were AI tools available then perhaps she could have been diagnosed earlier and given doctors an idea of how to treat her (or other patients). This discussion is really about giving folks more ideas of how to use AI.

Scott once again goes over the monumental growth ChatGPT has experienced in only four short years. It makes one wonder what the platform can deliver once more developers make better use of it. To illustrate his point, he likens the original GPT to a great white shark and GPT-4o to a blue whale.

OpenAI's Sam Altman takes the stage! Things might get crazy now.

Altman discusses how fast developers have adopted GPT-4 and how the new GPT-4o will be able to let devs do so much more.

Altman says to expect that models are going to continue getting smarter across the board. It became robust and much safer. The underlying capability of the model will continue to grow. He also expects speed and costs to change. Basically, GPT-4o will be faster and cost less.

Altman advises developers and says this is the most exciting time since the mobile boom or even the advent of the internet. He says these changes happen at the platform shift times, which he believes is happening now. Altman says a lof things will change in the next few years.

He says new tech doesn't get devs out of hard work. The work still needs to done. Devs have to figure out how to make these technologies useful to folks. He says it's best to not forget that it won't be easy bringing these new technologies to life.

Altman says it took a lot of work to make GPT robust and safe. OpenAI has created numerous teams to ensure the LLM works as intended.

Kevin Scott says Microsoft and its partners are spending a lot of money and resources to build a great AI platform.

And that's a wrap for Microsoft Build 2024!