• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, January 9, 2024

Microsoft has expanded its collaboration with Omnicom to include access to Microsoft Advertising solutions and inventory in Omni, its marketing platform. The announcement was made Tuesday at CES 2024.

The agreement follows a similar announcement at Cannes 2023, when Omnicom agreed to deploy Microsoft Azure AI Services to power Omni Assist, Omnicom’s inaugural Generative AI capability.

The expanded collaboration gives Omni’s 50,000 users access to audiences across the Microsoft Advertising Network and enable them to meet brand and performance objectives.

The integration aims to leverage Microsoft’s generative AI solutions to support insights, efficiency and performance within the Omni platform.

Microsoft at CES also said it will add a dedicated Copilot key on computers beginning with models debuting this week.

This is the first change the company has made to its keyboard hardware in 30 years, and the latest example of the bet it is making on integrating artificial intelligence (AI) into its hardware.

This week an interesting partnership emerged from CES. Sony's Honda Mobility company chose Microsoft as the partner to power the AI assistant.

What is the Sony Honda Mobility company? Sony and Honda partnered to make an electric vehicle company that they hope will change the way people think about mobility.  It not only transports people from one physical location to another, but also immerses them in entertainment and gaming. 

Microsoft will create the AI-powered agent for the new electric car, Afeela-EV, which is scheduled to debut in 2025.

Electronic vehicles require lots of software. Announced at CES, AVL collaborated with Microsoft to demonstrate the virtualization capabilities for vehicle software development.

AVL DevOps Pilot software provides a development and operations pipeline from simulation models and controller models, to test cases in a cloud-based platform. The goal is to reduce the development time for software-based vehicles as well as automates the testing and validation process to trace software development in the car.