🌐 Microsoft's open agentic web vision

PLUS: New AI headphones translate crowds in 3D

AuthorAuthor

Zach Mink & Rowan Cheung
May 20, 2025

Good morning, AI enthusiasts. Microsoft just kicked off a hotly anticipated AI week with its Build 2025 event, sharing a vision for an “open agentic web” with a flood of new tools and platforms.

With Google, Anthropic, and (likely) OpenAI also expected to bring some heat in the coming days, the AI industry’s next major acceleration may officially be underway.

In today’s AI rundown:

  • Microsoft’s vision for an open agentic web

  • Microsoft’s new AI to speed up science R&D

  • Transform photos into talking videos instantly

  • AI headphones translate crowds in 3D

  • 4 new AI tools & 4 job opportunities

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

MICROSOFT

Image source: Microsoft

The Rundown: Microsoft just introduced its vision for an “open agentic web” at Build 2025, releasing a slew of new AI-powered tools and upgrades, including a revamped GitHub Copilot, Copilot Studio, Azure Foundry, an AI browser agent, and more.

The details:

  • GitHub Copilot upgrades from an in-editor assistant to an agent that works asynchronously, with Microsoft also open-sourcing Copilot Chat in VS Code.

  • Microsoft dropped Magentic-UI, an open-source research prototype for human-in-the-loop web agents, focused on user collaboration and control.

  • The company is also adding Grok 3 and Grok 3 mini models from xAI to Azure AI Foundry, enabling developers to choose from over 1,900 models.

  • A new open project called NLWeb aims to be like HTML for the agentic web, making it easy to add conversational UI to websites.

  • Copilot expands with new tuning, allowing orgs to train models on company data, alongside multi-agent orchestration to collaborate on business tasks.

Why it matters: Microsoft kicked off a big week in AI with massive announcements at Build, and while the ‘year of the AI agent’ hasn’t yet been as practical as many expected, the needle is moving in the right direction — as is an industry shift to open source, as evidenced by the tech giant’s flurry of releases.

Watch CEO Satya Nadella’s full keynote here.

TOGETHER WITH DROPBOX

The Rundown: Dropbox Dash offers AI-powered search and knowledge management across content types and platforms, then turns the results into ready-to-use drafts — so you spend less time searching and more time creating.

With Dropbox Dash, you can:

  • Search videos, images, docs, and people across all connected apps in seconds

  • Generate briefs, summaries, and first drafts with built-in AI writing tools

  • Keep work secure with custom exclusions, GDPR compliance, and self-hosted AI

MICROSOFT

Image source: Microsoft

The Rundown: Microsoft also unveiled Discovery at Build, a new enterprise platform to speed up scientific research by enabling scientists to team up with specialized AI agents that crunch data and run experiments, accelerating findings from years to hours.

The details:

  • Discovery uses AI "postdoc" agents and a graph-based knowledge engine to help researchers form hypotheses, simulate experiments, and analyze results.

  • Microsoft showcased its power by discovering a novel, non-PFAS datacenter coolant prototype in about 200 hours, a task that usually takes months or years.

  • Discovery aims to democratize supercomputing, allowing scientists to use natural language instead of needing deep coding skills.

  • Big names like GSK, Estée Lauder, NVIDIA, and Synopsys are already lining up to integrate Discovery into R&D for everything from pharma to chip design.

Why it matters: Discovery could compress R&D timelines across industries by removing technical barriers between scientists and advanced tools. While previous AI science initiatives have often underdelivered, Microsoft's approach of combining AI agents with supercomputing power could help bridge the gap between hype and reality.

AI TRAINING

The Rundown: In this tutorial, you will learn how to use HeyGen's Avatar IV to turn any photo into a realistic talking video with just a script and voice selection.

Step-by-step:

  1. Visit HeyGen and select “Photo to Video with Avatar IV” from the Home tab

  2. Upload a clear photo of a face (at least 720p recommended)

  3. Add your script and select a voice (choose from the library, create new, or integrate a third-party voice like from ElevenLabs)

  4. Click “Generate video” and wait for processing to complete

Pro tip: You should use high-resolution photos with good lighting for the most natural-looking talking avatars.

PRESENTED BY UNSTRUCTURED

The Rundown: Ready to go from messy, unstructured data to a deployed AI assistant? Join Unstructured’s live webinar today to learn how to build an end-to-end RAG pipeline using Unstructured + Databricks.

Join to learn:

  • How to prepare raw data for RAG with Unstructured

  • How to store and manage chunks + embeddings in Delta Tables

  • How to set up Databricks Vector Search for fast, accurate retrieval

  • How to deploy a chatbot using LangChain + Databricks

AI RESEARCH

Image source: UW Washington

The Rundown: University of Washington researchers just developed an AI-powered headphone system that can translate multiple speakers simultaneously while preserving spatial location and unique voice characteristics.

The details:

  • A "Spatial Speech Translation" system uses off-the-shelf noise-canceling headphones rigged with extra mics to pick up surrounding conversations.

  • AI algorithms then separate individual speakers, translate speech in real-time, and play it back — preserving both voice qualities and spatial location.

  • The device scans 360 degrees like radar to detect and track multiple speakers, even as the subjects or the wearer move.

  • The tech currently works for Spanish, German, and French with a 2-4 second delay, and can run locally on devices using an Apple M2 chip.

Why it matters: Translation apps have gotten much better in the AI era, but still often struggle with real-world scenarios that are often noisy and bustling. This spatial approach is a practical game changer — and its integration into everyday devices like AirPods would completely change how we interact across language barriers.

QUICK HITS

  • 📝 Notion AI Enterprise Search -  Gives you the ability to search across 3x more connected apps, plus PDFs and databases*

  • ⚙️ Codex - OpenAI’s agent that handles multiple coding tasks at the same time

  • 📊 Grok - xAI’s advanced AI model, now capable of generating visual charts

  • 🤖 Agent Neo - Flowith’s new autonomous, million-context creation agent

*Sponsored Listing

Elon Musk shared more about Grok 3.5 at Build, saying it’ll reason from first principles and apply physics across all lines of reasoning to be truthful with minimal errors.

Apple’s former Head of AI, John Giannandrea, reportedly lobbied for the company to partner with Google’s Gemini over ChatGPT due to concerns over trustworthiness.

OpenAI CPO Kevin Weil said that the progression of AI agents from junior developers to senior architects will eventually lead to humans supervising AI engineering managers.

Nvidia introduced NVLink Fusion at Computex 2025, a new initiative that opens its ecosystem to allow rival CPUs and GPUs to connect with Nvidia hardware.

China issued a statement telling the U.S. to “correct its wrongdoings” following recent guidance that said using Huawei’s AI chips will be a violation of U.S. export controls.

Google released an Android app for its viral NoteBookLM information tool, allowing users to generate AI podcasts, study guides, briefing documents, and more via mobile.

COMMUNITY

Join our live workshop today at 5pm EST with Danny Wu (Head of AI at Canva) and Kelsey Moore (Product Marketing Manager). In this hands-on session, you’ll learn how to scale your visual content creation using Canva Sheets, Magic Write, and AI-powered tools — no design experience required.

RSVP here. Not a member? Join The Rundown University on a 14-day free trial.

That's it for today!

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See you soon,

Rowan, Joey, Zach, Alvaro, and Jason—The Rundown’s editorial team

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