On November 15, Microsoft announced Azure AI Studio, a new platform for generative AI application development, using OpenAI models such as GPT-4, as well as models from Microsoft Research, Meta, Hugging Face, and others. The motivation for the product, Microsoft said, is that “navigating the complexities of prompt engineering, vector search engines, the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pattern, and integration with Azure OpenAI Service can be daunting.”

It turns out that Azure AI Studio is a nice system for picking generative AI models, for grounding them with RAG using vector embeddings, vector search, and data, and for fine-tuning those models, all to create AI-powered copilots, or agents. It’s the “basement-level” tool for creating copilots, aimed at experienced developers and data scientists, while Microsoft’s Copilot Studio is a “2nd-floor level” low-code tool for customizing chatbots.

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