After OpenAI and Google took turns showcasing their muscles last week, the protagonist of this week's American AI competition is Microsoft.
On May 21st local time, Microsoft held a two-day 2024 Build Developer Conference. In just over two hours of speech on the first day, Microsoft announced more than 50 updates, including AI infrastructure, model product landing, and other aspects.
The alliance between Microsoft and OpenAI remains strong
The developer conference has always been a stage for technology giants to showcase cutting-edge technologies and products, in order to attract more developers and users to choose themselves rather than competitors. The artificial intelligence assistant Copilot became the core of this conference, demonstrating how Microsoft can further integrate AI technology into its platform ecosystem.
As an extension of Copilot for Microsoft 365, Microsoft has recently launched Team Copilot, aiming to extend from individual AI assistants to team assistants. Team Copilot can improve the efficiency of the entire team, completing tasks such as hosting meetings, tracking and scheduling project progress. Microsoft is expected to release a preview version to enterprise users later this year, supporting Teams Loop, Planner and other cooperative office software.
After Google's preview of the AI agent Project Astra with voice interaction and visual memory, Microsoft also released Copilot agents, but with a greater emphasis on executing work tasks. According to Microsoft, intelligent agents are no longer limited to conversations, but can more actively and spontaneously perform tasks in the background, such as monitoring email inbox, completing tedious data input, and so on.
Silicon Valley technology media The Information previously reported that Microsoft is developing a self-developed AI model, MAI-1, to reduce Copilot's reliance on OpenAI technology. It is expected to be showcased at this Build conference. But Microsoft did not disclose any information related to this at this conference, and announced that ChatGPT-4o, which was updated by OpenAI last week, will be integrated into the Azure cloud platform and can provide APIs to the public.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was still present at the scene, stating that, OpenAI is Microsoft's most important strategic partner. Microsoft remains the largest investor in OpenAI, with a total investment of $13 billion, therefore Microsoft also enjoys priority use rights for all OpenAI products.
But the closer relationship between Apple and OpenAI still poses a threat to Microsoft. Bloomberg previously reported that Apple is about to reach an agreement with OpenAI to finalize specific terms for applying the ChatGPT feature in the next generation iPhone operating system iOS18.
As the press conference drew to a close, Microsoft brought OpenAI CEO Sam Altman onto the stage in an attempt to demonstrate that the alliance between Microsoft and OpenAI remains strong. Sam Altman revealed that the improvement of new modes and overall intelligence will be the core of the next generation GPT-5 model. In order to meet the high computing power requirements of GPT-5, Microsoft has prepared a more powerful supercomputer.
Challenge Mac's Copilot+PC
On the day before the Build Conference, Microsoft launched a new type of Windows PC specifically designed for AI, called "Copilot+PC". Equipped with AI hardware and GPT-4o model, the new computer can use AI functions without relying on cloud data centers. Microsoft confidently stated that this is 58% faster than the MacBook Air equipped with an M3 processor, and the battery can last a whole day.
The new product starts at $999 and will be shipped from June 18th, with major PC OEMs such as Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo participating.
Microsoft hopes to boost computer sales through AI PC. The global PC market has been consistently sluggish since the outbreak of the pandemic. According to research firm Gartner, global PC shipments decreased by approximately 15% to 242 million units in 2023. Microsoft expects to sell 50 million AI PCs next year, and consumer marketing director Yusuf Mehdi said that running faster AI assistants directly on PCs will be "the most convincing reason for upgrading PCs for a long time.".
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an interview this week, "Apple has done a great job. We now hope to bring Windows and Mac back into real competition."
Earlier this month, Apple released a new version of the iPad Pro tablet, equipped with the latest AI chip M4. Although this M4 chip was not first released on MacBook laptops, there are reports that the first batch of Macs equipped with M4 may be launched later this year. Apple is also expected to introduce more features of AI chips at the World Developers Conference (WWDC) in June.
At last week's press conference, OpenAI announced the launch of a new desktop version of ChatGPT specifically designed for Apple Mac computers, while the Windows version will not be available until later. Microsoft urgently needs Copilot+PC to win back a game for Windows systems in the PC market of the AI era, but this still needs to be tested by the market.
Microsoft's market value surpassed Apple a few months ago to become the world's largest. Although OpenAI was chosen early on and benefited from it, the AI war is constantly changing, and giants such as Apple, Google, Amazon, and Tesla are still eyeing it. Microsoft's position is not necessarily unshakable.