Microsoft AI Tour London: Key Insights and Innovations

Transcript

On the 5th of March, I was privileged to go and attend the Microsoft AI tour in London. There were thousands of business stakeholders, technologists, and Microsoft partners arriving for a day of announcements and learning about the latest movements in the AI space. I think it's easily the biggest crowd I've been in since COVID, so it was genuinely exciting to be there and sense that energy of the crowd again.

I wanted to take the time to give you some of my thoughts, talk about some of the really interesting use cases that I saw, and give you a few key takeaways that you can bear in mind—maybe as you're evaluating AI or beginning to take the first steps in your AI adoption journey.

In terms of interesting use cases, the first one that really caught my attention was 'Be My Eyes'. This is a mobile app, and I didn’t know that there were 340 million blind and partially sighted people around the world. What Be My Eyes is doing is integrating AI into their app so that users can hold it up and it will describe visual media. This is truly a fantastic tool that can help increase the independence of partially sighted people around the world.

Another interesting use case was from Contoso, Microsoft's good old-fashioned demo solution. They’ve got a new version for the AI world called Contoso Outdoors. The idea is that it’s a website for a camping supplies company, and their solution showcased some really interesting ways to use AI.

The first example was in a chat-based scenario, where customers could make product requests. For example, a customer could ask:
"I’m going camping out in the woods in the middle of January. What do I need? It’s probably going to be minus 10°C. Please recommend the best sleeping bag or the best clothes to keep me warm."

The AI would then analyze the product catalogue and past purchase history to tailor a report for that customer in seconds—something that would have taken 15–30 minutes manually.

They then demonstrated another scenario where the customer said, "I don’t want to read anymore. Can I talk?" The system transferred the interaction to a phone call, allowing for a seamless transition from chat to voice. As a final flourish, the demonstrator spoke a few words in Japanese, triggering the AI to generate live Japanese text and speech. It was an astounding demonstration of AI’s capabilities.

As a developer, another use case that caught my attention was GitHub Copilot. They showcased its ability—now in public preview—to take a natural language description of a feature and implement it end to end.

For example, on the Contoso Outdoors website, a product page lacked an aggregated review rating. The team simply typed:
"We really need an aggregated review showing the score out of five stars based on the number of reviews."

Copilot processed the request, and when they reloaded the page, the feature had been built automatically. This was an incredible demonstration from the GitHub team.

My Key Takeaways

1. Viva La Revolution
We’re in the middle of the next industrial revolution, and AI is impacting all sectors and every level of business. AI is already being used to enrich employee experiences, reinvent customer engagement, reshape business processes, and accelerate innovation.

2. Go Beyond Chatting with Bots
We’re moving beyond just chatting with AI. We’re entering the world of agentic AI, where autonomous agents can accomplish tasks based on natural language instructions.

3. Natural Language is the Future
The phrase "I’m not good with computers" will soon be obsolete. We are approaching a Star Trek-style human-computer interaction era, where simply describing what you need in plain language will be enough for AI to complete tasks for you.

4. People Still Matter
The number one message that stood out is that AI is not here to replace humans but to augment their capabilities. Microsoft has even changed terminology—human workers are now called Customer Service Representatives, while AI is referred to as an agent. Ethical AI principles are being embedded to ensure AI enhances, rather than replaces, human value.

5. We Have the Tools
Microsoft is already providing tools to get started with AI, no matter your skill level:

• Microsoft Copilot for everyday productivity tasks

• Copilot Studio for low-code/no-code automation of AI-powered business processes

• Azure AI Foundry for pro-code enterprise-grade Agentic solutions

• GitHub Copilot to enhance developer productivity while keeping humans in the driving seat

We’re at a fascinating stage of AI evolution, and it can be overwhelming to figure out where to start. If yo want to have a chat, if you want to find out how Valorem Reply can guide you to get started your AI adoption journey, feel free to get in touch. We'd love to hear from you!