Microsoft is planning to include more artificial intelligence capabilities inside Windows 10 soon. The software giant is unveiling a new AI platform, Windows ML, for developers today, that will be available in the next major Windows 10 update available this spring. Microsoft’s new platform will enable all developers that create apps on Windows 10 to leverage existing pre-trained machine learning models in apps.
Windows ML will enable developers to create more powerful apps for consumers running Windows 10. Developers will be able to import existing learning models from different AI platforms and run them locally on PCs and devices running Windows 10, speeding up real-time analysis of local data like images or video, or even improving background tasks like indexing files for quick search inside apps.
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Microsoft’s Windows machine learning model is designed to run across a number of different devices, including laptops, PCs, Internet of Things devices, servers, datacenters, and the HoloLens headset. AI processors, like Intel’s Movidius VPU, will also be supported, and Microsoft’s platform will optimize tasks for the hardware available.
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Developers will be able to get an early look at the AI platform on Windows with Visual Studio Preview 15.7, and they’ll be able to use the Windows ML API in standard desktops apps and Universal Windows Apps across all editions of Windows 10 this year.Yes, Microsoft really are serious about this AI business. Details are still sketchy, including things like the expected release date (something which Microsoft is terrible with, anyway), and specifics about what sorts of enhancements this will translate into for real-world applications, as opposed to the purely theoretical speculations, but the idea that Microsoft is now working to evolve Machine Learning away from being the exclusive province of huge corporations is very good news. It means that ML might actually have a widespread impact on the daily lives of individual users in a way that they can actively, and knowingly, engage with, as opposed to being purely a black-box Big Data concern that seeks to manipulate them without their knowledge or consent. It's all potentially good stuff.
Unlike VR, Machine Learning is a "future tech now" which actually might live up to its hype, and making ML (i.e. Machine Learning) available for all developers, and usable even for standard desktop (i.e. Win32, or Windows 7) apps, could be very egalitarian and pro-consumer developments. It's also a sharp departure from the monopolistic, anti-consumer approach that Microsoft had take to all things Windows starting with Windows 8. The devil is in the details, of course, and Microsoft have said things before that sounded pro-consumer, only to have the final result be.... rather less than that, shall we say, but if they follow though on making ML available to developers of any Windows app, then I can only approve.
So, here we are, one day into the new Microsoft era, and their very first announcement is.... good? I mean, we've been burned so many times over the last few years that I'm reluctant to get excited about anything this soon, but... if Windows ML really does do what they say it'll do, and really is as accessible as they're saying it will be, then this really is good news. So... good job, Microsoft. More like this, please.