In 2023, we noticed generative AI usher in a wave of recent improvements, from Microsoft Copilot to the “last song” from The Beatles to serving to rural India farmers achieve simpler entry to authorities companies. These AI improvements at the moment are beginning to present up in our on a regular basis lives and have a optimistic affect for tens of millions of individuals all over the world.
Last week, as a part of Microsoft’s FY24 Q2 Earnings, we introduced we now have 53,000 Azure AI clients. Over one-third are new to Azure this calendar 12 months.
And we now have nice momentum with Azure OpenAI Service, too, which turned typically accessible simply over 12 months in the past, empowering builders and organizations to construct AI functions with OpenAI’s newest fashions (together with GPT-4 Turbo with Vision, fine-tuning for the foundational fashions, and DALL-E 3) backed by the enterprise capabilities of our Azure cloud. We proceed to introduce new innovation with Azure OpenAI Service together with Assistants API in preview, text-to-speech capabilities, assist for brand new fashions, and updates to fine-tuning API.
Azure AI
Build clever apps at enterprise scale with the Azure AI portfolio
Today, hundreds of organizations all over the world are utilizing Azure OpenAI service to drive significant enterprise affect for folks and society. We are seeing elevated utilization from AI-first startups like DeepBrain, Perplexity, and SymphonyAI, in addition to the world’s greatest corporations. Over half of the Fortune 500 use Azure OpenAI at this time, together with AT&T, Walmart, Ally Financial, and Carmax.
Helping taxpayers with AI Tax Assist
It’s no secret that submitting taxes could be annoying, overwhelming, and time-consuming. According to the IRS, the typical taxpayer spends 13 hours making ready their return. As we enter this 12 months’s tax season (the IRS formally started accepting eFiling from people on January 29), it’s particularly thrilling to see how H&R Block is leveraging the generative AI capabilities of Azure to assist ease the submitting course of for taxpayers this 12 months.
Almost half (46%) of the 146 million tax filers within the U.S. put together and file their very own taxes. This season, these 69 million DIYers could have the flexibility to simplify the tax preparation course of with H&R Block AI Tax Assist.1
Sound acquainted? You could have caught a glimpse of AI Tax Assist commercials final month through the NFL playoffs, or when the answer first launched in December 2023.
H&R Block AI Tax Assist is a generative synthetic intelligence (GenAI) expertise that harnesses the facility of Azure OpenAI Service to assist streamline the tax preparation course of for people, the self-employed and small enterprise homeowners to file and handle their taxes confidently.
“With H&R Block AI Tax Assist, we are enhancing the DIY tax filing experience. By applying generative AI tools with our unique ability to provide human expertise at scale, we’re taking a step forward in innovation to help make the tax filing process easier. We’re thrilled to work with Microsoft and leverage the power of Azure OpenAI Service to transform how Americans do their taxes.”
– Heather Watts, Senior Vice President of Consumer Tax Products, H&R Block
Leveraging knowledge from H&R Block’s The Tax Institute and the expertise of greater than 60,000 tax professionals, H&R Block AI Tax Assist helps DIY clients effectively work by way of the tax preparation course of by aiding with:
- Tax Information: AI Tax Assist can present info on tax types, deductions, and credit, maximizing potential refunds and minimizing tax legal responsibility.
- Tax Preparation: AI Tax Assist can information people by way of questions as they put together and file their taxes, reply tax principle questions and provide navigation directions when wanted.
- Tax Knowledge: AI Tax Assist can reply free-form tax-related questions, offering dynamic responses that make clear tax phrases and provides steerage on particular tax guidelines or common details about the U.S. and state tax system.
- Tax Changes: AI Tax Assist can reply questions concerning the tax code, lately modified legal guidelines and tax insurance policies.
“H&R Block has built a long-standing partnership with Microsoft starting with migration to Azure as a part of our broader digital transformation. As we considered platform partners for building the AI Tax Assist and AI Platforms more broadly, we indexed heavily on speed-to-market while ensuring we did it safely, responsibly, and honoring the trust our clients place in our brand every day. The capabilities of Azure OpenAI Service to enable responsible deployment of AI were critical in helping build confidence in this new solution and allowed us to deploy this new technology at scale to our clients early in our journey.”
– Alan Lowden, Chief Information Officer, H&R Block
Driving enterprise affect with Azure AI
Like H&R Block, organizations together with AT&T, Inflection AI, PwC, Siemens and Volvo are utilizing Azure AI to reimagine buyer experiences, take away friction in business-critical processes to assist end-users and workers focus their time and vitality on worthwhile work.
Whether constructing a copilot, a chatbot, or a artistic assistant, companies are benefiting from Azure AI’s mannequin selection, flexibility and multimodal capabilities by way of Azure AI Studio to innovate quicker and extra responsibly throughout a variety of numerous companies together with schooling, monetary companies, healthcare, manufacturing, and danger administration.
Our dedication to accountable AI
With Responsible AI instruments in Azure, Microsoft is empowering organizations to construct the following era of AI apps safely and responsibly. Azure AI Content Safety is a state-of-the artwork AI system that helps organizations hold AI-generated content material protected and create higher on-line experiences for everybody. Customers—from startup to enterprise—are making use of the capabilities of Azure AI Content Safety to social media, schooling and worker engagement eventualities to assist assemble AI techniques that operationalize equity, privateness, safety, and different accountable AI rules.