Microsoft, at its Build 2025 developer event, has announced the availability of new AI APIs in Microsoft Edge. At the time of writing, they’re available in the Canary and Dev channels. According to the Redmond giant, the APIs in Edge can be used by developers to integrate AI functionality into their web apps using models built into the browser.
By building language models into its web browser directly, Microsoft aims to boost user privacy, as they no longer need to send queries to cloud-based models. LLMs in the browser also gets rid of the need to manage on-device models, which can be complicated. The APIs give sites and extensions access to Phi-4-mini, Microsoft’s own 3.8 billion parameter model that compares well to much bigger models in testing.
The decision to use LLM models within the browser is good for developers working with sensitive data or working in regulated industries because no data will leave the device and potentially be analyzed by a third-party service provider.
Some of the new APIs include the Prompt API and the Writing Assistance API. The Prompt API allows you to prompt the model with an instruction while the Writing Assistance API can be used for generating, summarizing, and editing text. There is also the Translator API which can translate text, but that will only come after a couple of months.
Commenting, Microsoft said:
“With these APIs built into Edge, developers can streamline the development process and offload high-frequency AI tasks, thereby minimizing costs and effort.”
The ability for websites to call these APIs raises an important question, what about other web browsers? Well, Microsoft says that these experimental APIs that are intended to be potential web standards that will work across platforms, browsers, and with other AI models. The specifications of these APIs could be improved upon by other browser makers like Google and Mozilla, if they decide to work with Microsoft on this endeavor.
As mentioned at the start, these new APIs are now available in the Edge Canary and Dev channels. Microsoft is inviting feedback from the developer community so that they can be improved upon.
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