At the annual Ignite conference, Microsoft shared that GPT-4 Turbo with Vision will be available in Azure Open AI Service and Azure AI Studio. This will provide developers with multi-modal capabilities for their applications, allowing for greater possibilities.
Multimodal capabilities mean Microsoft's AI will support different input formats, including text, images, and more, making the tool more useful in more applications.
Additionally, the company said it is introducing vector search, which should improve response quality and reduce latency. Microsoft says this feature is critical for generative AI applications.
In explaining what vector search is, Microsoft writes:
"Vector search is a method of searching for information across a variety of data types, including images, audio, text, video, and more. It is one of the most critical elements of AI-powered smart applications, and adding this capability is the latest AI-ready feature in our Azure Database portfolio."
In addition to these announcements, Microsoft also decided to rebrand and expand its Copilot copyright commitment. For customers using the AzureOpenAI service, it is now called the Customer Copyright Commitment (CCC).
By extension, the CCC will help protect commercial customers if they are sued for copyright infringement due to output generated by the Azure OpenAI service, and Microsoft will pay the cost of any adverse judgment on its behalf.
To reduce the chance of customers being sued in the first place, Microsoft has released new documentation with technical information that customers can implement to reduce the risk of generating infringing content.
Clients need to adhere to these documents if they wish to be protected if sued. Putting safeguards in place to prevent the creation of copyrighted material will help Microsoft reduce costs.
A big issue with generative AI is safety. Microsoft reiterated its commitment to safe and responsible artificial intelligence. It said ethical values and fundamental principles were crucial but hoped its efforts would go further.