With Scout, an AI assistant that is intended to go significantly further than the previous Copilot, Microsoft seems to want to compete with Google's Gemini Spark. This signals a new race for the most intelligent business assistant possible. Scout is intended to integrate deeply into companies' work environments and run permanently in the background. The assistant connects to Microsoft 365 services such as Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive and is intended to take over tasks such as organizing appointments, drafting emails, expense reporting, or managing files. Microsoft emphasizes that Scout should be able to recognize relevant contexts better than Copilot and proactively draw attention to important tasks or events – for example, the optimal departure time for appointments, taking current traffic conditions into account. Scout builds on Open Claw – even though CEO Satya Nadella compared the technology to a virus just a few months ago. The KI-“skill” extensions from OpenClaw were also described as a security nightmare. However, in a conversation with The Verge, Microsoft expressed optimism about being able to guarantee Scout's security. Initially, a desktop preview will be available for selected Frontier customers in the USA. In the long term, Scout is intended to be fully cloud-based and permanently available. Project Solara: Microsoft is considering AI hardware In addition to software, Microsoft also offered a glimpse into its future with AI hardware at its Build developer conference. Under the name Project Solara, the company is developing a new platform for devices specifically designed for AI agents. Solara does not rely on Windows; Microsoft has not officially confirmed which operating system the devices will use. Speculation suggests Android. The devices are intended to function as lean terminals – as a window into a cloud-based agent infrastructure based on Azure. These are still early prototypes. Nevertheless, Microsoft is demonstrating that the company intends to play a larger role in AI hardware in the future, just like its competitors Google, Meta, and OpenAI. More AI directly on the Windows PC In addition, Microsoft announced new local AI functions for Windows 11. The core components are the two new compact language models, Aion 1.0. Aion 1.0 Instruct is intended to run directly on the device as a small, particularly fast model. It is complemented by Aion 1.0 Plan, a model for reasoning and tool calls, which is intended to enable fully local AI agents in the future, i.e., AI functions without cloud connectivity. Accordingly, Microsoft is expanding its Windows AI APIs. Together with the clinic operator Mayo Clinic, Microsoft also intends to develop a frontier model for the healthcare sector. The message from Build 2026 is therefore clear: Microsoft no longer wants to be just the platform for third-party AI. With Scout, the MAI model family, its agent systems, and AI hardware, the company is increasingly positioning itself as an independent AI provider – and thus competing more directly than ever with OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic.

Source: heise online

Read Original Source →