Microsoft’s AI Tour comes to London to celebrate AI innovation in the UK
Thousands of government officials, customers, partners, CEOs, journalists and employees gathered in person and online to take part in Microsoft’s UK AI Tour event at the Hilton Hotel in London’s Park Lane on Monday 21 October.
The theme of the day was how artificial intelligence (AI) – generative AI in particular – is empowering businesses, public sector organisations and industries to thrive in the digital age.
Nadella used his keynote speech to announce the launch of autonomous Copilot Agents, the next iteration of Microsoft’s generative AI assistants that are capable of carrying out automated tasks.
He highlighted how anyone can now build their own task-specific agents using “no code/low code” tools such as Copilot Studio.
‘Transformational change’
Welcoming the 600-plus business leaders gathered in the hotel’s ballroom, Barclay said: “We are operating in an era of significant transformational change”, pointing out the UK’s foundational role in the adoption of many technological developments throughout history, from the Industrial Revolution onwards.
We have a “once-in-a-generation opportunity with AI to drive unprecedented growth for the country, across all industry sectors, all sizes of organisation, and all regions of the UK,” she said.
The UK is already a global AI leader with a thriving tech start-up culture, much of it spinning out from world-renowned research institutions and universities, she said. And AI start-ups were attracting £1.5 billion in venture capital funding, with AI and cloud technologies forecast to boost the UK economy by £550bn over the next 10 years, according to Microsoft research.
Customers are now moving from “experimentation” to “adoption” of cloud and AI technologies, she said, with tangible boosts to productivity and innovation.
The age of AI
Nadella told the packed venue how these new autonomous agents would empower organisations to do things they never could before.
Now that the way we interact with computers has completely changed with the arrival of multimodal chatbots that can respond to text, voice, image and video inputs, he said, the addition of increased cloud compute power, the proliferation of data, and these reasoning agents would take us to the next level of productivity and innovation.
Microsoft is building the digital infrastructure, platforms and devices to enable the AI-powered world, he said, such as Copilot – “the UI [user interface] for AI”, Azure data centres, including those located in the UK, and cloud analytics tools, such as Fabric.
He highlighted that there are now 3.7 million GitHub Copilot developers in the UK, and shared examples of UK customers who are using Microsoft’s technology stack, including Clifford Chance, Unilever, HSBC, Mondra, Wayve and the British Heart Foundation.
Copilots and agents are removing a lot of the “drudgery” from work, he concluded.
But the successful diffusion of all this new technology depended on people trusting it, he emphasised, which is why Microsoft has developed core principles covering security, privacy and responsible AI.
Agents in action
Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer for AI at Work, gave a demonstration of one of these agents in action – automating the response to customer email queries for global consultancy McKinsey as an example. Automating this task alone was saving the firm 30% in overhead costs, he said.
He also highlighted how UK companies, such as Unilever and Clifford Chance, were using agents to streamline their workflows and markedly improve productivity, later chatting to Selina Sykes (Unilever’s Global Head of Digital, Media and Commerce – Beauty & Wellbeing) and Jessica Littlewood (Clifford Chance’s Global Operations & Business Transformation Partner) about the significant impact generative AI was having on their operations.
Innovation and inspiration
The busy AI Tour event also included a motivational talk from Lewis Pugh, Endurance Swimmer and UN Patron of Oceans, on ‘Achieving your Impossible’; ‘deep dive’ sessions on AI security and Copilot productivity; product demonstrations; and interviews hosted by veteran BBC broadcaster Victoria Derbyshire.
In her final address, Clare Barclay urged the audience to put their learnings in practice and ensure that AI not only improved the operational efficiency of their organisations, but also enabled employees to thrive and enjoy their jobs.
And she reiterated the point that ensuring the safety and security of AI was paramount for Microsoft and its customers.
Margherita delle Valle, CEO of Vodafone, the global telecoms firm headquartered in London, discussed with Barclay why the telecoms company had taken the bold step to increase the number of Microsoft 365 Copilot seats from 300 to 68,000, and explored which areas of the business were benefiting most from AI.
Customer service was the biggest beneficiary so far, delle Valle observed.
And in a light-hearted end to the day, Barclay quizzed actor and writer James Corden on his eclectic career and lessons learned from both failure and success.
Following London, the AI Tour visited Paris, Rome and Berlin.