How Microsoft's Azure AI Studio Will Allow Companies To Build Custom Copilots

Microsoft, in tandem with OpenAI, provides the Azure OpenAI Service: a partnership that provides access to everything ChatGPT has to offer, while cautiously shielding users per Microsoft's responsible AI policy. The cloud capacities of Azure seem an excellent fit for AI use, especially with the company always focusing on the risks as ever, and this concept is now being taken a step further.

Microsoft Azure AI Studio, as the company announced at Build 2023, is a new endeavor that will allow users to further the burgeoning potential of AI. Using the tool, they'll be able to adapt its abilities to their own requirements and ensure that it can complete the specific tasks they'll require of it.

In a Microsoft blog post, the company stated that GitHub Copilot — a sophisticated program that uses OpenAI Codex to help programmers complete the historically complex and time consuming work of coding — was the first example of a copilot as Microsoft defines it: "An application that uses modern AI and large language models (LLMs) like GPT-4 to assist people with complex tasks."

Microsoft Azure AI Studio is not simply an application, but another suite of tools. Through it, developers will be able to create their own AI copilots depending on the tasks in question. ChatGPT has courted controversy for the way that it "learned" by extracting information from across the Internet like a great digital vacuum cleaner, but with Microsoft Azure AI Studio, things will be different. Microsoft's Corporate VP of Data, AI, and Digital Application Product Marketing, Jessica Hawk, explained how at Microsoft Build 2023.

Hawk stated that Azure OpenAI Studio would build on the capabilities provided by GPT-4's early implementation into Azure OpenAI Service. The advent of Azure AI Studio means that "with just a few clicks, developers can now ground powerful conversational AI models, such as OpenAI's ChatGPT and GPT-4, on their own data." 

In tandem with Azure Cognitive Search, it's promised, key information (such as company stock levels) can be surfaced using increasingly sophisticated conversational models.

Microsoft's John Montgomery explained to TechCrunch that the laborious process of training an AI on that data would be unnecessary using the Studio. A developer can choose which model it's based on, the types of data and how it'll use it, the latter being crucial for potentially addressing some security concerns.

To manage demand, users can currently register to apply for access to the service at the official website.