Microsoft has formed the Microsoft AI and Research Group, bringing together Microsoft’s research organization with more than 5,000 computer scientists and engineers focused on the company’s AI product efforts. The new group will be led by Harry Shum, a 20-year Microsoft veteran whose career has spanned leadership roles across Microsoft Research and Bing engineering.

In addition to Shum’s existing leadership team, several of the company’s engineering teams will join the newly formed group including Information Platform, Cortana and Bing, and Ambient Computing and Robotics teams led by David Ku, Derrick Connell and Vijay Mital, respectively. All combined, the Microsoft AI and Research Group will encompass AI product engineering, basic and applied research labs, and New Experiences and Technologies (NExT).

"We live in a time when digital technology is transforming our lives, businesses and the world, but also generating an exponential growth in data and information," said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. "At Microsoft, we are focused on empowering both people and organizations, by democratizing access to intelligence to help solve our most pressing challenges. To do this, we are infusing AI into everything we deliver across our computing platforms and experiences."

Microsoft will try to harness AI to change human and computer interaction through agents such as its digital personal assistant Cortana. The company will also work towards the infusion of every application, from the photo app on people’s phones to Skype and Office 365, with intelligence. In addition, intelligent capabilities infused in Microsoft’s apps -cognitive capabilities such as vision and speech, and machine analytics - will be made available to application developers. And finally, Microsoft plans to build the world’s most powerful AI supercomputer with Azure and make it available to anyone.