Microsoft kicked off Build 2023 by detailing how it is expanding the plugin capabilities of Bing Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot through its partnership with OpenAI. Aside from detailing specific plugins, including Bing Chat into ChatGPT, Microsoft is also expanding the reach of its AI Copilot project, to Power Bi Copilot, Power Pages Copilot, and the launch of Microsoft Fabric.
Starting with Microsoft Fabric, it is a new end-to-end analytics solution that Microsoft claims helps organizations across all of their analytics requirements. It combines the various demands of data analytics into a single product offering a unified user experience and analytics environment.
Microsoft points out that because Fabric is a Software as a Service (SaaS), it can be instantly integrated and optimized into a current organization setup. Microsoft Fabric is debuting today as a free trial here. Microsoft says that Fabric ties together seven key data analytics requirements into a single product for business users:
- “Data Factory provides 150+ connectors to cloud and on-prem data sources, drag and drop experiences for data transformation, and the ability to orchestrate data pipelines. Currently in Public Preview.
- Synapse Data Engineering enables great authoring experiences for Spark, instant start with livepools, and the ability to collaborate. Currently in Public Preview.
- Synapse Data Science provides an end-to-end workflow for data scientists to build sophisticated AI models, collaborate easily, and train, deploy, and manage machine learning models. Currently in Public Preview.
- Synapse Data Warehousing provides a converged lake house and data warehouse experience with industry-leading SQL performance on open data formats. Currently in Public Preview.
- Synapse Real-Time Analytics enables developers to work with data streaming in from IoT devices, telemetry, logs, etc. and analyze massive volumes of semi-structured data with high performance and low latency. Currently in Public Preview.
- Power BI in Microsoft Fabric provides industry-leading visualization and AI driven analytics that enable business analysts and business users to gain insights from data. The Power BI experience is also deeply integrated into Microsoft 365, providing relevant insights where business users already work.
- Data Activator provides real-time detection and monitoring of data and can trigger notifications and actions when it finds specified patterns in data—all in a no-code experience. Currently in Private Preview.”
Microsoft Fabric has Access to Copilot
As you might expect from Microsoft in 2023, Fabric is integrated with AI from the company’s Azure OpenAI Service. Back in January, Microsoft announced the general availability of its Azure OpenAI Service. In March, the company revealed OpenAI’s GPT-4 is now available on the service. GPT-4 is a generative and multimodal email that can generate content such as text, voice, and images. Microsoft has adopted the AI across services such as Bing Chat, Dynamics 365, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and GitHub Copilot.
By tapping into OpenAI Service, developers can unlock the power of generative AI for their data analytics. This allows them to access Microsoft’s Copilot in Fabric to see further insights across the data experience and use conversational language for pipelines and data flows. Copilot also brings capabilities such as code generation.
Copilot in Power Pages and Power BI
Microsoft’s data AI push also includes the introduction of Copilot in Power Pages and Copilot in Power BI. Both new AI integration were announced at Build 2023 and are available in public preview from today. Microsoft also said it is adding generative capabilities to Power Virtual Agents to enhance bot building on the service.
Copilot for Power Pages: Available in preview in the US, Copilot for Power Pages allows access to the same generative AI that powers Microsoft 365 Copilot. It is a combination of Microsoft Graph, the company’s own AI models, and GPT-4 from OpenAI. In Power Pages, Copilot allows users to generate natural language descriptions and create data-centric forms by using simple prompts. Other capabilities include generating web page layouts, editing themes, and creating images.
Copilot in Power BI: Adding Copilot to Power BI brings the large language model (LLM) to help users leverage data to find insights more efficiently. Users can describe what they see and what insights they want, and Copilot will generate the results. Capabilities include generating and editing DAX calculations, building narrative summaries, asking data queons and more.
Power Virtual Agents: Generative AI abilities are now a part of Power Virtual Agents, making it easier to have meaningful conversions with customers by connecting them more seamlessly with APIs, content, and data sources. By leveraging generative AI, users can build bots that more intelligently deal with customer questions by directly accessing information to provide natural language responses.
