Microsoft has finally made all Copilot PCs--not just the Snapdragon ones--eligible for all of its AI-powered Copilot features. If you've been paying attention, you know that the Windows world is badly fragmented. Not only are users split between Windows 10 and Windows 11, but Windows 11 users aren't even all on the same version. Now, over the past year, AI has added another wrinkle with Microsoft mainly developing its Copilot PC features for Qualcomm's Snapdragon X platform while neglecting AMD's Ryzen AI 300 and Intel's Core Ultra 200 series processors. On Monday, Microsoft wrote in a blog post that PCs powered by AMD Ryzen AI 300 series, Intel Core Ultra 200V, and Snapdragon X series processors are all eligible for "exclusive Copilot PC experiences like Live Captions, Cocreator, Restyle Image, and Image Creator."

Security Copilot will combine Microsoft's vast threat intelligence footprint with industry-leading expertise to augment the work of security professionals through an easy-to-use AI assistant. "Today the odds remain stacked against cybersecurity professionals. Too often, they fight an asymmetric battle against relentless and sophisticated attackers," said Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president, Microsoft Security. "With Security Copilot, we are shifting the balance of power into our favor. Security Copilot is the first and only generative AI security product enabling defenders to move at the speed and scale of AI." Security Copilot is designed to work seamlessly with security teams, empowering defenders to see what is happening in their environment, learn from existing intelligence, correlate threat activity, and make more informed, efficient decisions at machine speed.

March 28, 2023 -- Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday announced it is bringing the next generation of AI to cybersecurity with the launch of Microsoft Security Copilot, giving defenders a much-needed tool to quickly detect and respond to threats and better understand the threat landscape overall. Security Copilot will combine Microsoft's vast threat intelligence footprint with industry-leading expertise to augment the work of security professionals through an easy-to-use AI assistant. "Today the odds remain stacked against cybersecurity professionals. Too often, they fight an asymmetric battle against relentless and sophisticated attackers," said Vasu Jakkal, corporate vice president, Microsoft Security. "With Security Copilot, we are shifting the balance of power into our favor. Security Copilot is the first and only generative AI security product enabling defenders to move at the speed and scale of AI." Security Copilot is designed to work seamlessly with security teams, empowering defenders to see what is happening in their environment, learn from existing intelligence, correlate threat activity, and make more informed, efficient decisions at machine speed.

MICROSOFT is adding artificial intelligence to its platform at lightning speeds. In the latest preview of Bing, the Windows maker introduced generative AI-assisted Knowledge Card 2.0 and Stories in Bing, the company announced in a blog on March 24. With'Stories', Bing can draft AI-generated stories to help users consume information via small data packets. It will use "text, images, video and audio" to deliver the results. These cater to "visual and auditory learners" and are available in different languages. "English, French, Japanese, German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Polish and Arabic" are the supported languages, Microsoft adds.

Microsoft today introduced what it's calling the "next generation" of AI product updates across its business apps portfolio. They touch on both Power Platform, Microsoft's set of low-code tools for building apps and workflows, and Dynamics 365, the company's suite of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) tools. In an interview with TechCrunch, Charles Lamanna, CVP of business apps and platform at Microsoft, described the updates as the logical next step on Microsoft's automation journey. Powered by tech from AI startup OpenAI and built using the Azure OpenAI Service, Microsoft's service that provides enterprise-tailored access to OpenAI's API, the new capabilities follow the rollout of OpenAI text-generating AI models in Power Platform four years ago and the more recent debut of generative AI capabilities in Viva Sales, Microsoft's seller experience app. "Over the last four years, we've been on a journey to bring generative AI and foundation models to the workplace," Lamanna said via email, noting that Microsoft has a longstanding partnership with OpenAI to commercialize the vendor's tech in Microsoft's own products and through the Azure OpenAI Service.

Since it started opening up its generative AI-powered chatbot in Bing earlier this month, Microsoft has granted more than a million people access to a preview of the tool, while millions more are on the waitlist. Until now, the only way to access the chatbot has been through the Edge desktop browser. But Microsoft is already bringing it to more products, services and devices. Starting today, those with access to the chatbot through their Microsoft account can use it on the Edge and Bing mobile apps for Android and iOS. Tapping the Bing button at the bottom of the namesake mobile app will start a chat session.

Someone looking to book a vacation online today might have very different preferences than they did before the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of flying to an exotic beach, they might feel more comfortable driving locally. With limited options for dining out, having a full kitchen might be essential. Motel rooms or cabins might be more appealing than hotels with shared lobbies. Countless companies use online recommendation engines to show customers products and experiences that match their interests. And yet, traditional machine learning models that predict what people might prefer are often based on data from past experience.

At its Build developer conference this week, Microsoft is putting a lot of emphasis on artificial intelligence and edge computing. To a large degree, that means bringing many of the existing Azure services to machines that sit at the edge, no matter whether that's a large industrial machine in a warehouse or a remote oil-drilling platform. The service that brings all of this together is Azure IoT Edge, which is getting quite a few updates today. IoT Edge is a collection of tools that brings AI, Azure services and custom apps to IoT devices. As Microsoft announced today, Azure IoT Edge, which sits on top of Microsoft's IoT Hub service, is now getting support for Microsoft's Cognitive Services APIs, for example, as well as support for Event Grid and Kubernetes containers.

In addition to the new data types, Microsoft has updated Excel Online with some highly requested features from Excel desktop. Excel Online will now allow you to insert Pivot Tables and delete rows and columns to analyze and format data. Images can also now be inserted from local storage, existing worksheets can now be duplicated, and you can now change the color of tabs. Elsewhere in Office 365 updates for March, Microsoft has started rolling out new features for Sharepoint. Personalized search, which was first announced last year, is now rolling out to all Office 365 users.