Microsoft launches a new API for Edge, a web browser, allowing developers to incorporate AI capabilities into their web apps using the built-in model in Edge.
The AI API announced at Build 2025 mirrors some of Google Chrome's features. It also offers “built-in AI” that allows developers to tap to power web applications. Microsoft's move suggests they are keen to offer competitors.
Edge's new API provides website and Edge Browser extension access to the Phi 4 Mini, an AI model released by Microsoft in late February. Microsoft said the Phi 4 Mini is excellent at math problems and is therefore of about 3.8 billion parameters in size. This is thanks to a training dataset that includes a combination of human-generated synthetic data and synthetic data (i.e. data generated by AI models).
Parameters roughly correspond to the model's problem-solving skills, and models with more parameters generally perform better than those with fewer parameters. However, it has the advantage of being more efficient, especially with powerful hardware, such as those found on laptops and mobile devices.
Edge has acquired other AI APIs, including a set of writing assistance APIs to generate, summarise and edit text. In a few months, Microsoft plans to release a translator API to provide AI-powered language translations via Edge, the company says.
“These experimental APIs are intended as potential web standards and work with platforms, browsers, and other AI models,” Microsoft wrote in a press release provided to TechCrunch. “For developers who work with sensitive data or work in regulated industries, these APIs provide privacy and security for device processing, eliminating the need to send data to external cloud services.”
All new AI APIs are available on Edge Canary and Dev channels.
In related news, Microsoft offers PDFS translation tools to Edge. With support for over 70 languages, users can open PDFs in Edge and click on the “Translation” icon in the Edge address bar to create a new document translated to the selected language.
PDF translations will be available to the public next month, and canary users can try it from today.