We’ve watched as artificial intelligence (AI) quickly transformed how we conduct business. Everything from healthcare to education has undergone tremendous change. Much of that is because of Microsoft’s support for generative AI, including their work with OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT. The company now makes it easier for developers to create AI applications by introducing Microsoft Azure AI Studio at its Build 2023 event.
How Does Microsoft Azure AI Studio Work?
Generative AI shapes the way people search for and consume information. Customers have already started using the technology through the Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. Thanks to Azure AI Studio, developers can create robust conversational AI models using their organization’s data. You can load information from different sources, prepare it for training, use relevant information to train the model, and then deploy it to production.
Developers save themselves a lot of time by not switching tools to accomplish different steps in the process. AI Azure Studio has models designed for natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and machine learning (ML). That puts developers further along in the process as they don’t need to train models from scratch.
Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Cognitive Search, currently in preview, will further enhance what developers can accomplish with AI Azure Studio. Azure Cognitive Search will power Azure vectors and allow you to store, index, and create search applications over vector embeddings of company data like text, video, and graphs.
Microsoft also plans to introduce support for Azure OpenAI plugins to simplify the integration of external data sources. It also streamlines the build and consumption of APIs. Current available plugins include:
Understanding Copilots
Azure AI Studio lets you combine models from ChatGPT or GPT-4 with organizational data to build a chat assistant or other application that evaluates private data for various purposes. Copilots, according to Microsoft, are chatbot apps that use text or image-generating AI to help with tasks like:
- Setting up a sales pitch
- Locating images for a presentation
- Summarizing meeting notes from a Teams session
- Analyzing Excel data
Copilots created in Microsoft Azure AI Studio can perform tasks. Copilot building starts with picking a generative model. Next, you provide the copilot with a meta-prompt, a base description of its role and how it should function.
From there, you can add cloud-based storage to the copilot to track conversations and provide responses using the proper context. Developers can extend copilots with plugins to access third-party data and services.
Azure AI studio benefits Microsoft customers by allowing them to leverage OpenAI models with proprietary data in ways that comply with internal organizational policies. They maintain access rights without compromising security and data policies. Developers can integrate internal and external data owned by a company in structured, unstructured, and semi-structured formats.
Other AI Studio components include:
Azure Dev Home
This web-based IE simplifies the development and testing of AI applications. It integrates seamlessly with Azure OpenAI Service and Azure Copilot, along with:
Azure Fabric
Azure Fabric is a distributed computing platform that helps developers scale up AI applications across multiple regions and nodes. Fabric supports many popular development languages and frameworks, including:
- TensorFlow
- C#
- PyTorch
- Python
Fabric also offers logging, monitoring, and security for AI applications.
What are the Key Features of Azure AI Studio?
Below is an overview of the top features available from Microsoft Azure AI Studio.
- Drag-and-drop interface — The intuitive interface lets developers create machine learning projects without writing code.
- Model management — Azure AI Studio lets developers effectively manage, version, audit, and track models.
- Integrations — You can integrate Azure AI Studio with other Azure services, including Kubernetes and SQL Database.
- Scalability — AI Studio scales to meet company needs, meaning you can conduct smaller experiments or deploy models capable of making millions of predictions per second.
- Automated machine learning — AutoML enables hyperparameter tuning and automated model selection, allowing developers to generate a robust model quickly.
Benefits of Using Azure AI Studio
Let’s look at ways you can reshape the future of AI development in your organization by using AI Studio.
1. Simplified AI Development
The user-friendly interface makes AI Studio accessible to everyone from experienced data scientists and business users new to AI. It reduces complexity and makes it easier for users to navigate the platform when working with AI tools and resources.
AI Studio comes with pre-built templates, algorithms, and sample projects that serve as starting points for AI projects. That reduces the need for extensive coding and algorithm development. The ability to choose from a wide range of algorithms saves developers a lot of time and effort when building models.
2. Version Control and Collaboration
The platform has version control capabilities that track changes to AI projects and models. That way, users have a history of revisions to reference when managing projects. That makes it easier to roll back to previous iterations and maintain code quality.
Users can also take advantage of AI Studio’s collaboration tools when working with other team members. Developers and project teams can work together on AI projects within Azure AI Studio, which makes communication easier and increases productivity.
3. Model Interoperability
AI Studio works with other Azure services like Databricks and Data Factory. These integrations help developers save time when building end-to-end AI pipelines. Azure AI Studio supports popular machine learning and deep learning frameworks like scikit-learn and ONNX (Open Neural Network Exchange). That broad framework support lets developers work with models built in other environments from Azure AI Studio.
Embrace AI Development with Azure AI Studio
Businesses can now take control of the development of AI technology within their organization. Internet eBusiness Solutions (IES) helps you unleash the full potential of AI to make your business processes run more seamlessly. Learn more about how your company could benefit from AI tools by contacting one of our IES technology experts.
