Microsoft opened its AI-focused .NET conference emphasizing developer tools integrating AI with .NET, including GitHub Copilot. Credit: Ferbies - shutterstock.com During the opening of .NET Conf Focus on AI on August 20, Microsoft’s Scott Hanselman described AI and .NET as a “match made in heaven.” Hanselman, who is vice president of the developer community, cited the GitHub Copilot AI-based pair programming tool as one example of a .NET integration with AI. GitHub Copilot is compatible with Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code editor and its Visual Studio IDE. The use of the C# OpenAI client was also demonstrated. Microsoft stressed that AI can be used in .NET applications and services with only a few lines of code. The company also promoted synergy between Semantic Kernel, which is a development kit for building AI agents, and the .NET Aspire stack for building cloud applications. Another feature was building interactive AI-powered web applications with the Blazor web framework and .NET. The infusion of AI into Windows apps with Windows Copilot Runtime and .NET was an event highlight, along with using the Teams AI library and .NET to enable developers to build a custom copilot. Other concepts to be discussed during the conference include integrating AI models within .NET applications, the convergence of OpenAI and Azure OpenAI, and leveraging RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) with .NET AI and Azure SQL. Building generative AI with data in an Azure Cosmos DB also was on the agenda. Microsoft .NETGenerative AIDevelopment ToolsSoftware Development