Build 2024: Microsoft shows off GPT-4o with cringe shoe demo

Microsoft's Build 2024 developer conference has been all about AI and CoPilot. Microsoft has invested billions in OpenAI and was pleased to show off how companies can integrate its Azure and Open AI services into their workplaces.

But things got a little goofy 49 minutes and 59 seconds into the stream:

During CEO Satya Nadella's keynote speech, the Microsoft head man showed a demo of how a company can use Azure's implementation of OpenAI's AI models to help customers make life easier through interactive agents. Nadella boasted that any app or website could become a "full multimodal full duplex conversational canvas."

The video stars Sam, a man in a rush trying to purchase cold-weather shoes for his vacation. He does this by showing the Copilot AI agent his pair of sandals and asks if those will be good enough for the snow. Somehow, the AI supercomputer knows sandals aren't good for cold weather. The AI Agent then gives Sam a better recommendation, and he thanks it in Spanish — to which the AI replies in kind.

The AI evidently also has access to his credit card information, which was weirdly glossed over.

While essentially an ad — mostly for Copilot — the demo showed off a few key things. The first is how developers can use Azure's access to Open AI's models, and the second is how this AI can respond to video and non-English languages in real-time. It also instilled a valuable lesson about keeping your feet warm.