The company has launched Azure AI Content Safety, an AI-powered moderation service designed to create a safer online environment. It’s trained to detect inappropriate content in images and text and assign a severity score to flagged content. The system understands multiple languages and provides clear explanations for content flagging or removal. This is a productized version of the safety system used in Microsoft’s Chatbot in Bing and Copilot.
Azure Content Safety
Microsoft has made changes to the Azure AI content safety filter to improve context awareness. It is recommended to use human verification for applications requiring minimal errors, as it detects harmful content such as hate speech, violence, and self-harm in both text and images. The AI models are still in the early stages of development, and the company is working to address potential biases.
This feature can be integrated into the Azure OpenAI Service and can also be applied to non-AI systems such as online communities and gaming platforms. The pricing for this service starts at $1.50 per 1,000 images and $0.75 per 1,000 text records. Similar to other AI-powered toxicity detection services, Azure AI content safety offers a score indicating the similarity of new comments and images to previously identified toxic content.
Microsoft Fabric
This is a new platform for developers that offers analytics for data engineering, integration and warehousing, science, and real-time analytics. Employees can gain valuable insights from data by leveraging the power of generative AI. The platform combines the power of PowerBI and Synapse with Azure OpenAI to provide a comprehensive analytics solution.
The platform includes:
- A unified platform
- Generative AI
- OneLak Data Lake
- Copilot
The platform provides various data and analytics tools required by your organization. It addresses the increasing size of data analysis projects while also helping customers reduce their cloud spending. Additionally, OneLake is a new data lake that provides shared storage across different cloud computing environments. It enables data sharing between users and applications without duplication, allowing unused resources to be utilized by other workloads and reducing costs.
This platform is primarily for enterprise customers and includes a built-in Copilot feature. It is expected to go on Preview Windows, and Copilot will be available for Windows Insider in June.
Microsoft Fabric Components
- Data Factory
- Synapse Data Engineering
- Synapse Data Science
- Synapse Data Warehousing
- Synapse Real-time Analytics
- PowerBI in Microsoft Fabric
- Data Activators
The goal of Fabrice is to eliminate data silos and optimize cloud usage, aligning with customers’ efforts to lower costs and optimize workloads. Fabric also addresses competition from new-style database and analytics vendors like Snowflake and Databricks. The integrated Copilot program with Fabric enables natural-language interfaces and conversational language experiences for data-related tasks.
Microsoft Dev Home
This is a simplified workload for developers on Windows 11, available on the Microsoft Store. It’s a new Dev Home app that makes it easy to set up new development PCs with new tools and capabilities for developers on Windows 11. It offers a centralized hub for developers to simplify various aspects of their workflow. You can easily set up development environments using configuration files to speed up the process. Dev Home also connects to GitHub, providing easy access to repositories and tracking changes in a customized dashboard.
Dev Home allows developers to link to GitHub, connect to relevant repositories, install tools and packages, and more. Dev Home uses the Windows package manager (Winget) to generate a configuration file for installing apps, tools, and packages. Dev Drive is a new storage home customized for developers that use the Microsoft Resilient File System (REFS) and a performance mode for Microsoft Defender. It also includes GitHub widgets for an overview of projects and issues. A preview version of Dev Home is currently available in the Microsoft Store, and interested developers can join the Dev Home Github Community.
They have collaborated with the Xbox Team to add GDK (Game Development Kit) to Dev Home for game developers. Custom build extensions are supported in Dev Home, allowing developers to enhance its functionality according to their specific needs. Dev Home also includes GitHub widgets for an overview of projects and issues. It will streamline workflow and connect GitHub, developer tools, and more. Dev Drive will offer 30% file system improvements in build times for I/O scenarios, and features aimed at reducing friction between developers and Windows users will get to coding faster.
It’s an open-source platform that allows developers to create their extensions and Dev Drives based on the ReFs file system, which enables a specific performance mode in Microsoft Defender for improved build time. It’s a specialized drive with improved performance and security for I/O scenarios. Windows 11 itself is getting updated to enhance the experience for developers and users. It also allows multiple instances of the same app on the taskbar that can be switched with a single click. It has support for a new archive format for improved performance in archive compression.
Windows Terminal tabs can be moved to different windows, and task management from the taskbar’s ability to hide the time and date is available in the preview. A dynamic lighting page in the settings app allows control of RGB lighting patterns and supports devices without third-party apps. With Dev Home, developers can connect to GitHub and set up cloud development environments such as Microsoft Dev Box and GitHub CodePace. It also makes it easier to keep track of coding tasks pull requests and monitor GPU and CPU performance from one location.
Dev Box: A Cloud-Powered Workstation
This is a computer that will be available to the public in July 2023. It is powered by the cloud and made for developers who want to test their projects. It uses Microsoft 365 and can be accessed from any modern web browser. Developers can choose a computer with different amounts of vCPUs, RAM, and storage. Microsoft has created a starting point for Windows and Visual Studio to help developers get started.
There are three options for the computer: 16 vCPUs and 64GB of RAM, 32 vCPUs and 128GB of RAM, and 8 vCPUs and 32GB of RAM. Over 9,500 Microsoft engineers are already using the computer across different teams within the company. It significantly reduces onboarding time, taking about 20 minutes compared to days.
The pricing details for the computer have not been disclosed yet, but Microsoft plans to charge for the computer and storage on a per-hour basis.