Latest news with #WindowsAIFoundry
Hans India
20-05-2025
- Hans India
Microsoft Integrates Model Context Protocol into Windows, Paving Way for AI Agent Revolution
Microsoft has taken a major step forward in its vision of an AI-first future for Windows, officially announcing native support for the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Often dubbed the 'USB-C of AI apps,' MCP is poised to revolutionise how intelligent agents interact with applications and services on the Windows platform. The move was unveiled alongside the launch of the Windows AI Foundry, an initiative designed to accelerate the development of AI-powered features and ecosystems within Windows. Together, these efforts mark a deeper commitment to transforming Windows into a platform where autonomous AI agents can seamlessly assist users with a broad range of tasks. MCP, introduced by Anthropic in late 2023, is an open-source communication standard that enables AI apps to connect with each other and external services—much like how USB-C connects different hardware devices. By embracing MCP, Microsoft aims to allow developers to build agents that can interact directly with both web services and Windows system functions. 'We want Windows as a platform to be able to evolve to a place where we think agents are a part of the workload on the operating system, and agents are a part of how customers interact with their apps and devices on an ongoing basis,' said Pavan Davuluri, head of Windows, in an interview with The Verge. The idea is simple but powerful: equip AI agents with the tools and protocols to interact intelligently with different components of the operating system. To support this, Microsoft is introducing new developer tools and an MCP registry that acts as a trusted directory of MCP servers. These servers will enable agents to tap into core Windows functionalities such as the file system, the Windows Subsystem for Linux, and window management tools. In practice, this means AI assistants on Windows could soon go beyond traditional limitations. For example, during a private demonstration, Microsoft showcased how the AI assistant Perplexity could use MCP to access and query a user's files. Instead of manually selecting folders or uploading documents, users could simply ask, 'Find all the files related to my vacation in my documents folder,' and the agent would handle the task seamlessly. This level of intelligent interaction could extend across the operating system, from simplifying workflows in Excel to streamlining system settings. Microsoft is also preparing Copilot Plus PCs to include an AI agent interface, allowing users to change settings using plain language commands. However, Microsoft is not overlooking the potential security risks. Experts have flagged possible vulnerabilities with MCP, including token theft, server compromise, and prompt injection attacks. Acknowledging these concerns, Microsoft is limiting access to the initial rollout and making the preview version available only to select developers. 'I think we have a solid set of foundations and more importantly a solid architecture that gives us all the tools to start, to do this securely,' said David Weston, vice president of enterprise and OS security at Microsoft. 'We're going to put security first, and ultimately we're considering large language models as untrusted, as they can be trained on untrusted data and they can have cross-prompt injection.' Despite these challenges, Microsoft's strategy reflects a strong belief in the future of "agentic computing"—a vision where AI agents are as central to digital interactions as the apps themselves. The company sees MCP as a foundational layer for this future, helping create a standardised, secure, and scalable framework for agents to thrive on Windows. With the successful integration of MCP and the establishment of the Windows AI Foundry, Microsoft has sent a clear signal: Windows is not just ready for AI—it's being reimagined around it.
Time of India
20-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Microsoft Build 2025: From Copilot to Windows upgrades, everything that Microsoft announced at its biggest developer event of the year
Microsoft 's yearly Build conference kicked off yesterday, in Seattle, with CEO Satya Nadella taking the stage to unveil the company's latest innovations. The four-day event showcased Microsoft's continued push toward AI integration across its ecosystem, with significant upgrades to developer tools, Windows features, and cloud capabilities. Here's a rundown of the most important announcements from this year's conference. GitHub Copilot transforms into a full-fledged AI coding agent GitHub's AI assistant can now independently fix bugs and build features while developers work on other tasks. The company unveiled a major evolution of GitHub Copilot that turns it from a mere code suggestion tool into an autonomous coding agent. This new version can automatically boot a virtual machine, clone repositories, analyze codebases, and make improvements without constant developer supervision. The agent can fix bugs, add features, improve documentation, and save changes as it works, providing detailed session logs of its reasoning. When finished, it tags developers for review and can automatically address any feedback comments. Windows AI Foundry brings advanced AI capabilities to local development Microsoft introduced the Windows AI Foundry, a comprehensive toolkit empowering developers to create AI applications for Windows. The platform supports both pre-built and open-source models through Foundry Local, allowing developers to fine-tune and deploy projects with minimal friction. This announcement comes alongside native support for Model Context Protocol (MCP), often described as the "USB-C of AI apps," which enables AI applications to seamlessly communicate with other apps, web services, and Windows components. Microsoft 365 gets copilot tuning and multi-agent orchestration Businesses can now train personalized AI assistants that understand company-specific data and workflows. For Microsoft 365 users, the company unveiled Copilot Tuning, allowing businesses to train AI models on their own data, workflows, and processes. This enables companies to generate content that matches their specific style and language. Additionally, multi-agent orchestration in Copilot Studio combines the specialized skills of different AI agents to tackle complex business tasks with greater efficiency. NLWeb protocol reimagines web interactions through natural language New open protocol allows websites to behave like AI agents, responding to natural language queries. Microsoft introduced NLWeb, an open protocol that transforms how users interact with websites. Rather than navigating through traditional interfaces, users can simply prompt websites for information or to perform specific tasks using natural language. NLWeb supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP), making content more discoverable and accessible to AI agents. Technical Fellow Ramanathan V. Guha described this as part of the "fourth revolution" in personal computing—communicating with applications through free-form language. Azure AI Foundry expands with 1,900+ models including Elon Musk's Grok 3 For cloud developers, Microsoft announced Azure AI Foundry, providing tools to select and test appropriate AI models for various applications. The platform now includes access to xAI's Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models from Elon Musk's company, alongside approximately 1,900 other AI models. Microsoft confirmed these models will be hosted and billed directly by the company, with standard Azure service level agreements. Windows Subsystem for Linux goes open-source After nine years, Microsoft open-sources WSL, allowing the developer community to contribute directly to the project. In a significant move for the open-source community, Microsoft announced that its Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is now open-source. Windows chief Pavan Davuluri explained that this long-requested feature required significant operating system refactoring to allow WSL to function independently, enabling developers to make contributions that Microsoft can integrate into the Windows pipeline at scale. AI Masterclass for Students. Upskill Young Ones Today!– Join Now
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Business Standard
20-05-2025
- Business
- Business Standard
Microsoft Build 2025: Everything new announced for Windows, web, and more
Microsoft hosted its annual developers conference, Build 2025, on May 19, introducing artificial intelligence-powered updates across Microsoft's product ecosystem. While many of the updates are aimed at developers, several announcements from Build 2025 point to an AI-infused future that will soon affect how consumers work with familiar Microsoft services and navigate the internet. Here's what consumers should take away from the wave of announcements made at Build 2025: Microsoft Build 2025: New announcements Microsoft 365 with personalised AI New abilities in Microsoft 365 will allow organisations to customise their AI-powered Copilots using internal data and workflows. This means that companies can train AI assistants to draft documents, summarise meetings, or automate emails in ways that reflect their specific communication styles, processes, and domain knowledge. Additionally, Microsoft introduced multi-agent orchestration in Copilot Studio —a feature that allows multiple AI agents to work together on complex tasks. For end users, this translates to more cohesive help across different Microsoft apps like Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams, enabling smoother collaboration and automation behind the scenes. AI-infused web experience Clicking through menus may become a thing of the past. Microsoft introduced a new open standard called NLWeb, which lets websites communicate with AI in natural language. That means instead of navigating through forms and drop-downs, users might just ask a site, 'Can I return my last order?' and get a response immediately. This is made possible by Microsoft's adoption of the Model Context Protocol (MCP)—an open standard first introduced by Anthropic. MCP is designed to let AI agents interact across apps and services more seamlessly. New Windows AI Foundry and updated Azure AI Foundry A major reveal was the introduction of the Windows AI Foundry, a new toolkit designed to help developers build and run AI models on Windows devices or hybrid cloud environments. It supports open-source frameworks and custom models, enabling local AI abilities like intelligent assistants and image recognition—without always relying on the cloud. Meanwhile, Azure AI Foundry received significant upgrades, including tools for model selection and evaluation, a new Agent Service, and Agent ID, which assigns unique identities to AI agents. Another major addition to Azure AI Foundry is the inclusion of Grok 3 and Grok 3 Mini models from xAI, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company. Agentic AI capabilities for GitHub Copilot Microsoft is evolving GitHub Copilot from a real-time coding assistant into a more autonomous AI agent that can handle coding tasks asynchronously. Instead of just giving coders suggestions in the code editor, this new version of Copilot is integrated into the GitHub platform and works on their behalf. That means it can perform coding tasks in the background, even when the user is not actively typing in codes. Microsoft Discovery Among the announcements was the launch of Microsoft Discovery, a new platform aimed at researchers and scientists. The platform uses AI agents to assist with complex discovery processes, from analysing data to generating hypotheses. Microsoft envisions this technology speeding up breakthroughs in areas such as drug development, materials science, and climate research.
