Microsoft to offer rival AI models from own datacentre; launches AI coding agent
Microsoft on Monday said it would offer new AI models made by Elon Musk's xAI and European startups Mistral and Black Forest Labs hosted in its own datacentres, and unveiled a new artificial intelligence tool designed to complete software coding tasks on its own.
The announcements, made at Microsoft's annual Build software developer in Seattle, Washington, underscored the changing nature of Microsoft's relationship with ChatGPT creator OpenAI, which Microsoft has backed and which announced a directly competing product last week.
Microsoft has recently situated itself as a more neutral player in the AI arms race, showing less appetite to shell out huge sums of cash to fund OpenAI's research ambitions while also working with a broader array of AI players, all with an eye on growing sales while keeping a lid on costs.
Microsoft's new Github Copilot feature is what as known as a coding agent. While previous iterations of Microsoft's AI coding tools could automatically generate bits of code based on what a developer was already doing, the agent is designed to go much further.
The agent will take a few instructions from a human - such as a description of a software bug and a strategy for how to fix it - and then get to work, alerting the human to review its work once it has finished coding. OpenAI last week released a preview of a similar agent that it calls Codex.
At the Build conference on Monday, Microsoft laid out a vision of a world in which businesses will craft agents of their own for various tasks inside a business. Its primary offering in that area is called Azure Foundry, a service that lets businesses build their own agents based on the AI model of their choice.
Those agents are likely to be built with a mix of different AI models, Asha Sharma, corporate vice president for product of Microsoft AI platforms, told Reuters.
Microsoft on Monday said that it would offer xAI's Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models on its cloud services as well as models from French startup Mistral and German startup Black Forest Labs, bringing the total number of models it offers to Azure customers more than 1,900.
Importantly, those models will run within Microsoft's own data centers, meaning Microsoft can make promises about their availability in an era when popular models are often plagued with outages when demand outstrips the capacity to serve them. Sharma said Microsoft plans to add more popular models soon.
"One of the most important parts to be able to build an app and seamlessly use the most popular models is making sure your reserved capacity that you have with Azure Open AI starts to work across the most popular models," Sharma told Reuters.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Al Etihad
22 minutes ago
- Al Etihad
UK launches AI skills drive for workers and schoolchildren
9 June 2025 12:08 London (AFP) The UK government is to team up with tech-giants including Google, Microsoft and Amazon to train 7.5 million workers in AI skills, Prime Minister Keir Starmer is to announce on is also set to unveil £187 million ($253 million) in funding to help develop tech abilities for one million secondary school students, as part of its "TechFirst" programme to bring AI learning into classrooms and communities."We are putting the power of AI into the hands of the next generation -- so they can shape the future, not be shaped by it," Starmer was to say, according to extracts released by his Downing Street office."This training programme will unlock opportunity in every classroom -- and lays the foundations for a new era of growth," he was to UK's AI sector is valued at £72 billion and is projected to exceed £800 billion by 2035. It is growing 30 times faster than the rest of the economy, employing over 64,000 people, according to government TechFirst, Starmer was also to announce a government-industry partnership to train 7.5 million workers, with tech giants committing to make training materials freely available to businesses over the next five will focus on teaching workers to use chatbots and large language models to boost EMEA President Debbie Weinstein called it a "crucial initiative" essential developing AI skills, unlocking AI-powered growth "and cementing the UK's position as an AI leader". The government was also to sign two Memorandums of Understanding with semiconductor firm NVIDIA, "supporting the development of a nationwide AI talent pipeline", according to the UK government.
Campaign ME
34 minutes ago
- Campaign ME
WPP Media expands Open Intelligence, reveals retail and media partners
WPP Media has expanded its Open Intelligence data solution, offering the industry a large marketing model (LMM) trained to understand and predict audience behaviour and marketing performance based on patterns derived from trillions of signals from datasets that reveal how people engage with content, brands, platforms, and products in real time. Open Intelligence allows brands and marketers to build custom AI models enhanced with their own first-party data and fine-tune them according to their strategic business goals. Retailers connected to Open Intelligence maintain full data sovereignty and platform control, while unlocking new monetisation opportunities through privacy-preserving model collaboration. Simultaneously, WPP Media has also announced partnerships designed to connect both sides of the media ecosystem: commerce and content. Retail media – on the commerce side – has quickly evolved to become central to consumer marketing strategy; while premium media owners and supply-side platforms are reshaping content monetisation through advancements in streaming, audio, digital and TV environments. 'Disney Advertising has led the industry in data collaboration for over a decade, setting a new standard with the launch of Disney Compass – our proprietary data collaboration and measurement platform,' said Dana McGraw, SVP of Data and Measurement Science at Disney. 'As we continue to push the industry forward, collaborations with agencies like WPP Media allow us to scale that vision – connecting the most valuable insights to the most premium inventory, with precision, performance and purpose,' McGraw added. The challenge that needs to be addressed The marketing era of old is evolving: Sequential journeys, broad demographic bets and probabilistic predictions have collapsed under the weight of fragmentation, regulation and rapidly evolving consumer behaviour. Touchpoints are now infinite and fluid, journeys no longer linear, and the funnel has flattened into a loop of constant consideration and immediate action. Brands face a choice: adapt or get outflanked. Retail is no longer just a sales channel – it's become the strategic heartbeat of consumer marketing. And media no longer just distributes content – it shapes the entire commerce experience. With dominant walled gardens, fragmented signals, and rising privacy obligations, marketers and media owners alike need a new way to win. WPP Media Open Intelligence: Solving for both brands and retail partners WPP Media's Open Intelligence aims addresses the most significant issues faced by both retail partners and client-side marketers today. For brands: The proliferation of commerce data providers and the exponential growth of retail media did not come without growing pains. Often finding themselves signal rich and insights poor, brands face extreme fragmentation of data access, metric and measurement inconsistency, and significant lag between insight and activation. As part of its latest announcement, WPP Media has revealed partnerships with premium media platforms and brands such as Disney, Dotdash Meredith, and NBCUniversal, as well as adtech players such as Criteo, Index Exchange, Magnite, PubMatic, The Trade Desk, and Yahoo DSP. 'Harnessing the power of AI-driven insights is revolutionising how brands connect with audiences. Through our collaboration with Open Intelligence, and building on our longstanding partnership with WPP Media and Choreograph, PubMatic is proud to help deliver predictive, privacy-centric solutions that drive real business outcomes and set a new benchmark for innovation in digital advertising,' said Kyle Dozeman, Chief Revenue Officer, Americas, Pubmatic. Open Intelligence aims to empower brands to: Derive business insights quickly, directly, and through a single point of access. Reach retail audiences generated with precision, not probability, across the digital marketing ecosystem. Transition from insight to activation to measurement. For retail partners: The shift away from panel-based and probabilistic data created an opportunity to take control of the wealth of loyalty-anchored purchase data that runs their business to develop new, high-margin revenue streams. However, cementing retail media as the preferred approach for awareness and consideration marketing objectives is still largely uncharted territory; significant resources are required for retailers to evolve into fully-formed media owners and publishers. As part of its latest announcement, WPP Media has revealed the first wave of retail integration partners, including Criteo, DICK's Sporting Goods, and Ocado Ads. Jack Johnson, Head of Retail Media and Data at Ocado, said, 'Our partnership with WPP on Open Intelligence signifies Ocado Ads' commitment to maximizing the potential of our comprehensive customer data. We're excited to partner with WPP to offer the sophisticated targeting, measurement, and personalization capabilities that will enable advertisers to achieve their goals.' Retail partners participating in Open Intelligence will be able to: Meet the expectations of today's consumer brands by making retail insights more readily digestible and actionable to full-funnel marketers Preserve their 'platform sovereignty' and customer trust by using privacy-focused infrastructure to effectively govern proprietary retailer data Reach the largest global network of CPG and FMCG advertisers when and where they plan and activate their full-funnel advertising to capture that demand These initial partners represent several key players in global retail and retail media. They, and others, will help to power Open Intelligence with signals and commerce data that are: Deterministic – Tied to real transactions. – Tied to real transactions. Diverse – Spanning purchase, sales channel, demographic, brand-and-category loyalty, operational data. – Spanning purchase, sales channel, demographic, brand-and-category loyalty, operational data. Accountable – With closed-loop measurement to prove ROI. Collectively, these organisations play a central role in the way content is distributed and monetised across streaming, audio, television and programmatic channels. WPP Media Open Intelligence: Benefits for advertisers and media owners The addition of these partners further strengthens the power of WPP Media's Premium Supply offer and AI-data solution, allowing advertisers to leverage predictive intelligence based on high quality publisher data. Clients leveraging Open Intelligence will now be able to: Reach audiences before their competitors, based on early intent signals Connect with audiences in trusted environments and mutually beneficial contexts Improve campaign performance with custom AI models optimized to drive specific business outcomes Reduce reliance on third-party data and identity-based targeting Marketers will also be able to realise the predictive intelligence benefits of Open Intelligence across channels. For example, predicting which connected TV viewers will be most likely to visit a car dealership after seeing an ad; identifying podcast listeners actively shopping in specific categories; surfacing high-intent audiences in premium editorial environments; and enabling real-time bidding based on purchase probability. Because this data is connected within secure, decentralised environments enabled by WPP Open and InfoSum's multi-party technology, both advertisers and publishers maintain control over their data without sacrificing signal quality or being forced to choose between privacy and performance. Similarly, Open Intelligence also enables connected media owners to maximise the value of their first-party data and inventory by: Building predictive audience segments from real-time behavioral patterns Connecting multiple data sets in real time without sharing data Packaging inventory based on intent, relevance, and performance potential Enhancing campaign performance, while preserving platform control and user privacy These capabilities offer a new way for publishers to maximise the value of their inventory by offering advertisers performance-based media products, not just reach-based inventory. Open Intelligence will roll out to WPP Media clients in a phased approach over the course of 2025.
Al Etihad
a day ago
- Al Etihad
Apple under pressure to shine after AI stumble
8 June 2025 09:19 SAN FRANCISCO (AFP)Pressure is on Apple to show it hasn't lost its magic despite broken promises to ramp up iPhones with generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) as rivals race ahead with the will showcase plans for its coveted devices and the software powering them at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) kicking off Monday in Silicon event comes a year after the tech titan said a suite of AI features it dubbed Apple Intelligence was heading for iPhones, including an improvement of its much criticised Siri voice Apple delayed the rollout of the Siri upgrade, with hopes that it will be available in time for the next iPhone release, expected in the fall."Apple advertised a lot of features as if they were going to be available, and it just didn't happen," noted Emarketer senior analyst Gadjo Sevilla."I don't think there is going to be that much of a celebratory tone at WWDC," the analyst told AFP. "It could be more of a way for Apple to recover some credibility by showing where they're headed."Industry insiders will be watching to see whether Apple addresses the AI stumble or focuses on less splashy announcements, including a rumoured overhaul of its operating systems for its line of devices."The bottom line is Apple seemed to underestimate the AI shift, then over-promised features, and is now racing to catch up," Gene Munster and Brian Baker of Deepwater Asset Management wrote in a WWDC preview also include talk that Apple may add GenAI partnerships with Google or Perplexity to an OpenAI alliance announced a year its lineup with AI is only one of Apple's who build apps and tools to run on the company's products, may be keen for Apple to loosen its tight control of access to iPhones.A lawsuit by Fortnite maker Epic Games ended with Apple being ordered to allow outside payment systems to be used at the US App Store, but developers may want more, analysts have to the WWDC buildup is that the legendary designer behind the iPhone, Jony Ive, has joined with ChatGPT maker OpenAI to create a potential rival device for engaging with while unlikely to come up at WWDC, Apple has to deal with tariffs imposed by US President Donald Trump in his trade war with China, a key market for sales growth as well as the place where most iPhones are made. Trump has also threatened to hit Apple with tariffs if iPhone production wasn't moved to the US, which analysts say is impossible given the costs and capabilities.
