News from the AI & ML world
DeeperML - #microsoftcopilot
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Alexey Shabanov@TestingCatalog
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Microsoft is aggressively expanding the AI capabilities within its Copilot ecosystem, incorporating task automation and enhanced content creation tools. The company is currently testing "Agent Actions" in Microsoft Copilot, a feature designed to automate daily computing tasks. This capability, initially limited to select testers or Copilot Pro subscribers, is intended to allow users to delegate tasks during brief sessions. Furthermore, Copilot now includes native image generation powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o model, replacing DALL-E 3. This upgrade allows users across various platforms to generate higher-quality visuals directly within the app, negating the need for third-party integrations.
Microsoft is also refining the visual identity of Copilot, evolving the appearances of its AI personas. The fourth character, resembling a bubblegum or cloud, is undergoing further design changes. These characters, which serve as a branding layer, are expected to be further refined before their full release. These changes align with Microsoft's focus on seamlessly integrating productivity, assistance, and personality within the Copilot AI environment. Copilot for Sales is receiving significant updates aimed at streamlining sales workflows and improving CRM integration. These improvements include improved extensibility for third-party insights in email summaries within Outlook, providing partners the ability to surface richer sales insights. Additionally, sellers can now directly save AI-generated meeting summaries to CRM systems such as Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Salesforce from Teams, eliminating the need for manual logging. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has stated that the company's AI model performance is doubling every six months due to improvements in pre-training, inference, and system design. Recommended read:
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@www.microsoft.com
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Microsoft is aggressively integrating AI into its services to boost productivity and user experience. A key development is the rollout of Microsoft Copilot for Judges in UK courts, alongside updated guidelines for GenAI usage. These efforts are part of a broader strategy to embrace human-agent collaboration, as seen in the latest Microsoft 365 Copilot upgrades. The goal is to harness AI's capabilities while ensuring responsible and secure implementation across various sectors.
The UK Courts and Tribunals Judiciary are encouraging judges to utilize Microsoft’s ‘Copilot Chat’ genAI capability through their eJudiciary platform. Updated guidance emphasizes that while useful, judges must use genAI cautiously and understand its limitations, particularly concerning the accuracy and sources of information. Judges are warned that public AI chatbots do not provide answers from authoritative databases and are not necessarily the most accurate source. Microsoft has assured that ‘Copilot Chat’ offers enterprise data protection and operates within Microsoft 365's security frameworks when accessed via the eJudiciary account. Microsoft is also working to enhance safety and security in AI agent systems. The Microsoft AI Red Team has released a whitepaper outlining the taxonomy of failure modes in AI agents, to help security professionals and machine learning engineers understand potential risks. This effort involved cataloging failures from internal red teaming, collaboration with various Microsoft teams, and interviews with external practitioners. The taxonomy identifies failure modes across security and safety pillars, addressing issues from data exfiltration to biased service delivery. Recommended read:
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Thomas Claburn@The Register
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Microsoft is significantly advancing human-agent collaboration with the latest upgrades to its Microsoft 365 Copilot. The tech giant is rolling out new updates, including Researcher and Analyst agents designed to enhance workplace productivity by providing in-depth research and data analysis. These AI agents, powered by OpenAI's deep reasoning models, are envisioned as digital colleagues capable of performing complex workplace tasks, helping professionals tackle intricate challenges with advanced reasoning capabilities. This aligns with Microsoft’s broader AI-first strategy, aiming to scale digital labor and drive substantial productivity gains for companies adopting these technologies.
Microsoft is also unveiling a redesigned Microsoft 365 Copilot app featuring AI-powered search and an Agent Store, positioning it as the central hub for human-agent collaboration. The new AI-powered enterprise search tool, Copilot Search, organizes data across the enterprise, providing rich, context-aware answers from first-party and third-party apps like ServiceNow, Google Drive, and Jira. The Agent Store provides access to Microsoft’s Researcher and Analyst agents, initially introduced in March and available to those enrolled in Microsoft’s Frontier program. Moreover, Microsoft is adding new capabilities to its Control System feature to assist IT professionals in overseeing and measuring bot usage effectively. These updates are part of a broader effort to integrate AI across the Microsoft ecosystem, addressing the increasing demand for AI-powered solutions in the enterprise. According to Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index report, a significant majority of companies are rethinking their strategies to leverage AI, signaling a decisive move toward full-scale AI transformation. Key features include AI-powered enterprise search, personalized memory capabilities, specialized reasoning agents like Researcher and Analyst, and the Agent Store. The Researcher agent helps with multi-step research tasks, while the Analyst agent provides data science capabilities. Recommended read:
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@www.microsoft.com
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Microsoft is pushing forward on multiple fronts to enhance its AI offerings, particularly within the Copilot ecosystem. Recent updates include the testing of new voices, "Birch" and "Rain," alongside a sneak peek at a fourth avatar, "Ellie," for the assistant. These additions aim to personalize the Copilot experience across Windows, web, and mobile platforms, giving it a clearer identity without fundamentally altering its core language model with each update. The new avatar, Ellie, is currently under development, and while only its background is loading, the animated figure is absent, hinting at a release window that is still undefined. These incremental avatar and voice additions are part of a broader strategy to give Copilot a clearer personality.
Microsoft's Semantic Telemetry Project is revealing insights into user engagement with AI. The data shows a strong correlation between the complexity and professional nature of tasks undertaken with AI and the likelihood of continued and increased usage. Individuals employing AI for more technical, complex, and professional tasks are more inclined to continue using the tool and to interact with it more frequently. Novice AI users tend to start with simpler tasks, but the complexity of their engagement increases over time. However, more expert users are satisfied with AI responses only where AI expertise is on par with their own expertise on the topic, while novice users had low satisfaction rates regardless of AI expertise. Furthermore, Microsoft is tackling AI model efficiency with the development of BitNet b1.58 2B4T, a 1-bit large language model (LLM) featuring two billion parameters. This model is designed to run efficiently on CPUs, even an Apple M2 chip. BitNet achieves this efficiency through its 1.58-bit weights, using only three possible values (-1, 0, and +1), significantly reducing memory requirements and computational power compared to traditional models. While BitNet’s simplicity makes it less accurate compared to larger AI models, it compensates with a massive training dataset. The model is readily available on Hugging Face, allowing experimentation with it. Recommended read:
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Lalit Mohan@The Lalit Blogs
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TestingCatalog
, Ken Yeung
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Microsoft is enhancing Copilot with new features aimed at transforming user interaction and productivity. One of the most exciting additions is the podcast-generation feature, currently in early testing. This capability allows users to convert virtually any topic or user-supplied materials into dynamic, AI-driven audio shows. The tool scripts a back-and-forth conversation between two synthetic hosts, providing listeners with a summary that adapts in real time based on user interaction, streamlining multitasking and promising a better user experience.
The podcast feature, initially outlined at Microsoft's 50th-anniversary Copilot event in April 2025, allows users to input a topic or paste source content, which Copilot then analyzes to draft a script and render the dialogue using its neural text-to-speech stack. While AI-generated podcasts aren't entirely new, integrating them directly into Copilot allows Microsoft to compete more effectively in multimodal output, enhancing user engagement through richer interactions. Microsoft plans to roll out Copilot Podcasts in the coming weeks, with enterprise, mobile, and API access slated for later in the year after testing concludes. Alongside the podcast feature, Microsoft continues to update Copilot with new functionalities and improvements, including enhancements to its shopping experience and the introduction of new voices. Users in the U.S. can now shop with ease directly on Copilot, accessing product details, alternative retailer offers, and price insights. The addition of Birch and Rain voices provides users with more options for interacting with Copilot. These updates, regularly highlighted in Microsoft’s Copilot Release Notes, demonstrate the ongoing evolution of Copilot as an AI-driven tool aimed at simplifying technology for businesses and individuals. Recommended read:
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Alexey Shabanov@TestingCatalog
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Microsoft has announced significant enhancements to its Copilot AI assistant, including the launch of the Copilot Merchant Program. This new initiative aims to integrate third-party retailers directly into the Copilot ecosystem, allowing users to receive real-time product suggestions and price alerts. Retailers participating in the program can embed their product catalogs into Copilot, ensuring their offerings are accurately represented and visible to a wider audience of potential customers. This integration promises to streamline the shopping experience for Copilot users, enabling them to complete purchases seamlessly within the app.
Microsoft is also expanding Copilot's capabilities with new features designed to enhance the shopping experience. Users can now dive deeper into product details with the "View details" button, access additional product images, review summaries, and explore pros and cons. Copilot offers features like Filter Interactions, which allows users to select desired options for products with multiple attributes, and Buying Options, which lists alternative retailer offers for price comparison. Price Insights show the high, low, current, and average prices for a product over the last 13 months, and Easier Checkout simplifies the process for select retailers. Further updates include the introduction of two new voices, Birch and Rain, for Copilot. For macOS users, a long press of Option + Space now activates the Press to Talk feature, enabling voice interaction with Copilot. These updates reflect Microsoft's ongoing commitment to improving Copilot's functionality and user experience. Microsoft is encouraging users to explore Copilot Labs to experience experimental features before their public release, and is providing regular updates via the Copilot Release Notes. Recommended read:
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@the-decoder.com
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Microsoft is pushing the boundaries of AI in both security and gaming, showcasing new advancements in both fields. On the security front, Microsoft is hosting a Tech Accelerator event on April 22, 2025, aimed at guiding developers and cloud architects on effectively integrating security best practices within Azure and AI projects. The event will provide essential guidance and resources for secure planning, building, management, and optimization of Azure deployments and AI applications. Participants will gain insights from Microsoft experts, learn how to identify security risks in Azure environments, protect infrastructure from threats, and design secure AI environments and applications.
Microsoft is also making waves in the gaming world with its real-time AI-generated playable demo of Quake II. The company's WHAMM (World and Human Action MaskGIT Model) is a generative AI model capable of supporting real-time gameplay. This model represents a significant upgrade from its predecessor, WHAM-1.6B, offering faster visual output, improved resolution, and smarter gameplay response. WHAMM can generate images at over 10 frames per second with a resolution of 640x360, a notable enhancement compared to WHAM-1.6B. The WHAMM model was trained on Quake II using intentional data curation, focusing on high-quality data collected from professional game testers. This allowed the model to efficiently learn in-game behavior with significantly less data than previous iterations. Players can interact with the game using controllers or keyboards, with the model dynamically updating the environment to respond appropriately. While WHAMM is still in its early stages and has limitations, such as occasional input lag and challenges with accurately storing stats, its accelerated rate of advancement suggests a future where entirely AI-generated video games could become a reality. Recommended read:
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@PCWorld
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Microsoft has unveiled a significant overhaul of its Copilot AI assistant, introducing new features designed to enhance its capabilities and transform it into a personalized AI companion. This marks a pivotal moment as Microsoft aims to make AI more accessible and beneficial for everyday life. The updates include improvements to memory, allowing Copilot to remember user preferences and details such as favorite foods, movies, and important dates. This personalization enables Copilot to offer customized solutions, proactive suggestions, and timely reminders, making it more intuitive and responsive to individual needs.
The upgraded Copilot now boasts enhanced multimodal capabilities, including the ability to analyze live video from mobile devices and answer questions based on visual content. It can also perform tasks on websites, such as booking tickets, making reservations, and shopping online, streamlining various online activities. The introduction of "Pages" organizes notes and research into a cohesive workspace, while the "Deep Research" function synthesizes information from documents and images, aiding in comprehensive information gathering and analysis. These features are aimed at making Copilot a more versatile and indispensable tool for both personal and professional use. These enhancements position Microsoft's Copilot as a direct competitor to other AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. However, Microsoft has not provided detailed performance data or addressed potential limitations. User feedback has also highlighted mixed experiences with its functionality and privacy concerns regarding data tracking, suggesting that further refinement and transparency are needed. The rollout of these features and subsequent user reception will likely shape future iterations of the chatbot, as Microsoft strives to create an AI assistant that truly understands and caters to individual user needs. Recommended read:
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@laptopmag.com
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The Microsoft Cloud Blog
, www.laptopmag.com
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Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary with a renewed focus on artificial intelligence, particularly through its Copilot assistant. At the anniversary event, Microsoft highlighted its plans to transform Copilot into a more personal and proactive AI companion, aiming to make AI work for everyone. The goal is to move beyond basic Q&A responses and create an AI that understands users in the context of their lives, showing up on their terms at the right time. The company envisions Copilot becoming an AI for everyone, more intuitive, and capable of remembering user preferences to provide customized solutions.
Microsoft is supercharging Copilot with upgrades designed to make it more responsive and helpful. New features include enhanced memory to recall important details such as favorite foods and birthdays, and the ability to complete tasks on the user's behalf. These enhancements aim to make Copilot more personable, with Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman emphasizing the importance of personality and tone in differentiating AI products. Microsoft is working to establish Copilot as the most personable AI companion, feeling like someone the user knows really well. Copilot Actions, another new feature, will allow the AI to browse the web and carry out tasks like booking event tickets, making dinner reservations, and even buying gifts through partnerships with various websites. In addition to these upgrades, Microsoft is launching two AI reasoning agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot: Researcher and Analyst. Researcher integrates OpenAI's deep research model with Microsoft 365 Copilot's orchestration and search capabilities to perform complex, multi-step research workflows. Analyst, powered by OpenAI's o3-mini reasoning model, is designed to help turn raw data into actionable insights within minutes by running Python code to process complex data queries. These agents, along with other upcoming Copilot features, will be available to customers with Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses through a new program called "Frontier". Recommended read:
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Alexey Shabanov@TestingCatalog
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Microsoft is significantly enhancing its Copilot AI assistant across various platforms as part of its 50th-anniversary celebrations. The upgrades aim to transform Copilot from a simple chatbot into a more proactive and personalized AI companion. These enhancements include memory capabilities, allowing Copilot to remember user preferences and past interactions, as well as new features such as real-time camera analysis, AI-generated podcasts, and the ability to perform tasks on the user's behalf, creating a more intuitive and helpful experience. Microsoft aims to make AI work for everyone, modeling Copilot after the helpful AI assistant Jarvis from Iron Man.
A key aspect of the Copilot update is the introduction of "Actions," enabling Copilot to act as an AI agent that can browse the web and carry out tasks like booking event tickets, making dinner reservations, and even buying gifts. This functionality will work with various websites and is designed to complete tasks without requiring constant user intervention. Copilot Vision is also expanding, now available on iOS, Android, and Windows, which enables the AI to analyze surroundings in real time through the device's camera, offering suggestions such as interior design tips or identifying objects and providing relevant information. Additionally, Copilot will offer customizable appearances, potentially through the use of avatars. Microsoft is also focusing on improving Copilot's ability to conduct research and analyze information. The new "Deep Research" feature analyzes and synthesizes data from multiple sources, similar to features in ChatGPT and Google Gemini, providing users with comprehensive insights in minutes. Microsoft has also launched Copilot Search in Bing, combining AI-generated summaries with traditional search results, providing clear source links for easy verification and a more conversational search experience. These updates are intended to make Copilot a more valuable and integrated tool for users in both their personal and professional lives. Recommended read:
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Alexey Shabanov@TestingCatalog
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Microsoft is significantly enhancing its Copilot AI assistant with new features focused on personalization, memory, and proactive task completion. These upgrades are designed to make Copilot a more useful and intuitive companion for users, moving beyond simple Q&A to a more personable and supportive AI experience. Microsoft's CEO of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, emphasizes that the key differentiator in the competitive AI assistant market will be the personality and tone of the AI, aiming to create a relationship where users feel like they are interacting with someone they know well.
Copilot's new capabilities include improved memory, allowing it to remember user preferences, important details like birthdays and favorite foods, and even corrections made by the user. This enhanced memory enables Copilot to provide more customized solutions, proactive suggestions, and personalized reminders. Additionally, Copilot is gaining the ability to take action on behalf of users, such as booking flights, making dinner reservations, and purchasing items online. This functionality, known as Copilot Actions, will work with various websites, making Copilot a more versatile and helpful tool for everyday tasks. Further upgrades include a new "Discover" screen on both mobile and web platforms, offering interactive cards and personalized daily briefings. The "Vision" feature allows Copilot to access and understand content from other websites when used within the Edge browser. Microsoft is also exploring features like adjustable reasoning effort, "Pages" for content creation, and animated avatars to enhance the user experience. These advancements, along with tools like "Deep Research" and the ability to generate podcasts, position Copilot as a comprehensive AI assistant capable of assisting users in various aspects of their lives. Recommended read:
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@laptopmag.com
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Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary on April 4th, 2025, marking a significant milestone focused on its AI driven future. Top executives highlighted the company's vision for AI, centered around Copilot, which will be further integrated into Microsoft products. Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, emphasized that Copilot will understand users in the context of their lives and show up in the right way at the right time, calling it "a new kind of relationship with technology."
Microsoft is launching Researcher and Analyst AI agents in Microsoft 365 Copilot. Researcher integrates OpenAI's deep research model with Microsoft 365 Copilot's orchestration and search capabilities to perform complex, multi-step research workflows. Analyst, powered by OpenAI's o3-mini reasoning model, helps turn raw data into actionable insights within minutes, capable of running Python code to process complex data queries. These agents, accessible through the "Frontier" program, aim to provide on-demand assistance in data analysis and general research tasks, enhancing user capabilities across various applications. Recommended read:
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Alexey Shabanov@TestingCatalog
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Microsoft is supercharging its Copilot assistant with new capabilities, transforming it into a companion for all. The company is equipping Copilot with new features designed to make it more responsive and helpful, including memory recall and personalization. This will allow the AI assistant to better understand and remember user preferences, complete tasks, analyze surroundings, and keep life organized. Microsoft aims to make AI work for everyone and wants Copilot to become the AI companion people want, tailored just for them.
Microsoft launched two AI reasoning agents for 365 Copilot: Researcher and Analyst. Researcher handles complex research using multiple sources, while Analyst functions as a data scientist to transform raw data into insights. These agents will roll out this month as part of a new program called "Frontier". The company is also adding new mobile and web features, personalization options, and exclusive tools for Surface devices. Recommended read:
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Ken Yeung@Ken Yeung
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Microsoft is launching a 50-day AI Skills Fest, starting April 8, 2025, aimed at helping individuals advance their technical knowledge in artificial intelligence. The global event will feature a wide array of activities including hackathons, both live in-person and virtual events, self-paced tutorials, and community events. Microsoft hopes to set a Guinness World Record for the most participants completing an online multi-level AI lesson in 24 hours as part of the inaugural launch.
Microsoft is also rolling out updates to its Copilot+ PCs. AMD and Intel-powered Copilot+ PCs will gain access to Windows Copilot features like Cocreator, Image Creator, Live Captions and Restyle Image, previously available only on Snapdragon-powered devices. These features utilize the onboard Neural Processing Unit (NPU) and generative AI to enhance user experiences within Microsoft Paint and Photos, enabling image generation and modification. Recommended read:
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Mike Wheatley@SiliconANGLE
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Microsoft is enhancing its Copilot AI assistant with advanced reasoning and agent capabilities aimed at boosting productivity across various Microsoft 365 applications. Key updates include deep reasoning within Copilot Studio and the introduction of specialized AI agents like Researcher and Analyst, designed to tackle complex problems and provide more nuanced insights. These agents leverage advanced reasoning models, such as OpenAI's o1 and o3-mini, to perform detailed analysis, methodical thinking, and data-driven decision-making, simulating the approach of skilled professionals.
Microsoft is also integrating its Security Copilot with AI agents to automate tasks. New agents being added to Security Copilot include ones designed to sort through large volumes of security info, analyze notifications, and fix insecure user access rules. Microsoft also released a new Knowledge Base-Augmented Language Models (KBLaM) system which is a more efficient way to incorporate external knowledge into language models. All of these tools are designed to give you the help you need faster. Recommended read:
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Ken Yeung@Ken Yeung
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Microsoft is enhancing its Copilot Studio platform with new 'deep reasoning' capabilities, allowing AI agents to solve complex problems more effectively. This upgrade also includes 'agent flows' which blend AI's flexibility with structured business automation. The new Researcher and Analyst agents for Microsoft 365 Copilot represent a significant step forward in AI agent evolution, enabling them to handle sophisticated tasks requiring detailed analysis and methodical thinking.
Microsoft's Security Copilot service is also getting a boost with a set of AI agents designed to automate repetitive tasks, freeing up security professionals to focus on more critical threats. These AI agents are designed to assist with critical tasks such as phishing, data security, and identity management. These agents showcase the breadth of what can be created when combining enterprise business data, access to advanced reasoning models, and structured workflows. Recommended read:
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Vasu Jakkal@Microsoft Security Blog
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Microsoft is enhancing its Security Copilot with new AI agents designed to automate cybersecurity tasks and offer advanced reasoning capabilities. These agents aim to streamline security operations, allowing security teams to focus on complex threats and proactive security measures. The agents, which will be available for preview in April 2025, will assist with critical areas like phishing, data security, and identity management.
The introduction of AI agents in Security Copilot addresses the overwhelming volume and complexity of cyberattacks. For example, the Phishing Triage Agent can handle routine phishing alerts, freeing up human defenders. In addition, Microsoft is introducing new innovations across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview to help organizations secure their future with an AI-first security platform. Six new agentic solutions from Microsoft Security will enable teams to autonomously handle high-volume security and IT tasks while seamlessly integrating with existing Microsoft Security solutions. Recommended read:
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