Azure Updates: AI Foundry Labs; DeepSeek R1; EHR; VMs

Microsoft CVP Asha Sharma announced the introduction of Azure AI Foundry Labs. The newly introduced Foundry Labs is intended to be a “hub for developers, startups, and enterprises.” For instance, Microsoft is using it to make available its first World and Human Action Model (WHAM) called Muse. Additionally, Microsoft is unveiling other assets for Foundry Labs such as the Aurora atmospheric forecasting model, ExACT to enable agents to learn from past interactions, and Magentic-One, a multi-agent system for solving complex problems, among others. :

“Azure AI Foundry Labs highlights the long-term collaboration between research and engineering teams at Microsoft and provides a single access point for developers and the broader AI community to experiment with new models, explore the latest frameworks, and be at the forefront of innovation. Developers can create prototypes using experimental research in Azure AI Foundry Labs, collaborate with researchers and engineering teams by sharing feedback, and help speed up the time to market for some of the most promising technologies,” Sharma wrote.

General Manager Herain Oberoi looked at how to secure DeepSeek R1 on AI Foundry and GitHub. To ensure the safety of the new offering, Microsoft has added built-in content filtering with AI Content Safety, with opt-out options to improve flexibility. Developers building AI workloads can leverage Defender for Cloud’s AI security posture management capabilities, which can spot contextualized security issues. Additionally, Microsoft is integrating Defender XDR to centralize AI workload alerts.