Migrating to GPT-5.x Without Breaking GPT-4: A Practical, Backward-Compatible Playbook
The first request your service sends after swapping gpt-4o for gpt-5.1 in production will return HTTP 400. Not in two weeks. On the first call. And the parameter the error points to isn't one you set anywhere in your code - it's bound onto the request by a LangChain helper you've used for two years. This post walks through every breaking change between the GPT-4 and GPT-5 families on Azure OpenAI in Microsoft Foundry, the integration cliffs nobody warns you about, and the small set of files you need so the same call sites work against both model families without branching. Who this is for: engineers maintaining an existing production codebase that calls Azure OpenAI / OpenAI - directly or through LangChain - and needs to onboard GPT-5.x while keeping the GPT-4 deployments alive during rollout. What you'll leave with: one copy-paste compatibility module, a tiny LangChain subclass, a prompt-audit harness, and a 10-step rollout checklist. 1. Why this migration is different Every previous Azure OpenAI bump - 3.5 → 4, 4 → 4o, 4o → 4o-mini - was additive. You changed engine="gpt-4o" and everything kept working. GPT-5.x is the first generation that is subtractive: parameters you used to send now return 400 Unsupported parameter. The wire protocol itself changed because GPT-5 is a reasoning model - it spends tokens thinking internally before it answers, so the parameters that controlled the old sampling pipeline (temperature, top_p, presence_penalty, frequency_penalty) no longer exist on the request schema. What this means for production code: A passing test suite against gpt-4o will fail on the first call against gpt-5.1 with HTTP 400. A passing test suite against gpt-5.1 will fail on every legacy gpt-4* deployment because the new reasoning controls (reasoning_effort, verbosity) are not recognised there. LangChain helpers that worked unmodified for two years (notably create_sql_query_chain) silently bind stop=[...] onto your LLM and trigger the same 400. Source-grep won't find the offending line because it lives inside the library. The good news: the divergence is mechanical. With one detection helper, one parameter-builder, and one tiny LangChain subclass you can run the same code against both families. 2. The breaking-changes matrix Concern GPT-4 / GPT-4o (legacy) GPT-5.x / o1 / o3 (reasoning) Output budget max_tokens max_completion_tokens (rejects max_tokens) temperature 0.0–1.0 Only the default (1) is accepted - omit it top_p Supported Rejected presence_penalty, frequency_penalty Supported Rejected logprobs, logit_bias Supported Rejected stop sequences Supported Rejected on most reasoning deployments reasoning_effort Rejected New: minimal | low | medium | high verbosity Rejected New: low | medium | high (sometimes via extra_body) System instruction role system developer recommended; system still works as alias Output token cost Output tokens only Output + reasoning tokens count against your cap Recommended API version 2024-12-01-preview or earlier 2025-03-01-preview or later Two consequences are easy to miss: max_completion_tokens is a shared budget. GPT-5.1 can burn 2–4× more tokens internally before emitting the first response token. A cap of 4096 that comfortably held a SQL query on GPT-4o now silently truncates the answer mid-token on GPT-5.1. Multiply your legacy budgets by ~2.5× and add a floor (e.g. 4096) before sending. The stop parameter is the silent killer. Any helper that calls llm.bind(stop=[...]) - and there are several in langchain - will turn a working code path into a 400 the moment you swap deployments. 3. Compatibility strategy: detect, don't fork The temptation is to fork: one branch for GPT-4, one for GPT-5. Don't. The right unit of abstraction is one function that classifies the deployment into a family, and one function that builds a kwargs dict the SDK will accept for that family. Every call site - SDK, LangChain, raw HTTP - drains into the same kwargs builder. When you eventually retire GPT-4 you delete the legacy branch in one file, not in fifty. 4. The industry-agnostic compatibility module Drop the following file into your project. It has no Azure / OpenAI / LangChain imports at module load time, so the same file works from a web service, a serverless function, a notebook, or a CLI tool. 4.1 model_compat.py """ Model compatibility helper for GPT-5.x with GPT-4 backward compatibility. This module centralises the parameter translation needed to talk to the "reasoning" generation of OpenAI / Azure OpenAI models (GPT-5, GPT-5.1, o1, o3, o4) while keeping older deployments (gpt-4, gpt-4o, gpt-4-32k, gpt-3.5-turbo, etc.) working unchanged. """ from __future__ import annotations import logging import os import re from typing import Any, Dict, Iterable, Mapping, Optional # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Family detection # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- _REASONING_PATTERNS = ( # gpt-5, gpt5, gpt-5.1, gpt_5, GPT 5, gpt5mini-prod-eu, ... re.compile(r"(?i)(^|[^a-z0-9])gpt[-_ ]?5(\.\d+)?([^0-9]|$)"), # o1, o3, o4, o1-mini, o3-preview ... re.compile(r"(?i)(^|[^a-z0-9])o[134](-mini|-preview)?([^a-z0-9]|$)"), ) _LEGACY_PATTERNS = ( re.compile(r"(?i)gpt[-_ ]?4o"), re.compile(r"(?i)gpt[-_ ]?4(?!\d)"), re.compile(r"(?i)gpt[-_ ]?4[-_ ]?32k"), re.compile(r"(?i)gpt[-_ ]?3\.?5"), re.compile(r"(?i)gpt[-_ ]?35"), ) def get_model_family(model_or_deployment: Optional[str]) -> str: """Return ``"reasoning"`` for GPT-5.x / o-series, ``"legacy"`` otherwise. Honours an ``OPENAI_MODEL_FAMILY`` env-var override for deployments whose user-defined name does not embed the model family (e.g. ``prod-default``). """ override = (os.getenv("OPENAI_MODEL_FAMILY") or "").strip().lower() if override in {"reasoning", "gpt-5", "gpt5", "gpt-5.1", "o-series", "o1", "o3"}: return "reasoning" if override in {"legacy", "gpt-4", "gpt4", "gpt-3.5", "gpt35", "chat"}: return "legacy" name = (model_or_deployment or "").strip() if not name: # Fail closed: when we don't know, assume legacy so old code keeps # working. Misclassifying a reasoning deployment as legacy fails fast # with a clear "Unsupported parameter" 400; the reverse silently # drops parameters the caller expected. return "legacy" for pat in _REASONING_PATTERNS: if pat.search(name): return "reasoning" for pat in _LEGACY_PATTERNS: if pat.search(name): return "legacy" return "legacy" def is_reasoning_model(model_or_deployment: Optional[str]) -> bool: return get_model_family(model_or_deployment) == "reasoning" # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Reasoning controls # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- _VALID_REASONING_EFFORT = {"minimal", "low", "medium", "high"} _VALID_VERBOSITY = {"low", "medium", "high"} def _coerce_choice(raw: Optional[str], valid: Iterable[str]) -> Optional[str]: if raw is None: return None value = str(raw).strip().lower() if not value: return None if value not in set(valid): logging.warning( "Ignoring unsupported value '%s'; expected one of %s", raw, sorted(valid), ) return None return value def get_reasoning_effort(override: Optional[str] = None) -> Optional[str]: return _coerce_choice( override if override is not None else os.getenv("OPENAI_REASONING_EFFORT"), _VALID_REASONING_EFFORT, ) def get_verbosity(override: Optional[str] = None) -> Optional[str]: return _coerce_choice( override if override is not None else os.getenv("OPENAI_VERBOSITY"), _VALID_VERBOSITY, ) # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- # max_completion_tokens scaling # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- def _reasoning_token_scale() -> float: """Multiplier applied to legacy ``max_tokens`` when targeting a reasoning model.""" try: scale = float(os.getenv("OPENAI_REASONING_TOKEN_SCALE", "2.5")) except (TypeError, ValueError): scale = 2.5 return scale if scale > 0 else 1.0 def _reasoning_token_floor() -> int: try: floor = int(os.getenv("OPENAI_REASONING_TOKEN_FLOOR", "4096")) except (TypeError, ValueError): floor = 4096 return floor if floor > 0 else 4096 def scale_max_tokens_for_reasoning(max_tokens: Optional[int]) -> Optional[int]: """Scale a legacy ``max_tokens`` budget up for reasoning models. ``None`` and ``-1`` ("no explicit cap") are passed through. """ if max_tokens is None: return None if max_tokens == -1: return -1 return max(int(round(max_tokens * _reasoning_token_scale())), _reasoning_token_floor()) # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Kwargs builders # --------------------------------------------------------------------------- _SAMPLING_KEYS = ("temperature", "top_p", "presence_penalty", "frequency_penalty") def _drop_none(mapping: Mapping[str, Any]) -> Dict[str, Any]: return {k: v for k, v in mapping.items() if v is not None} def build_openai_chat_kwargs( model: str, *, max_tokens: Optional[int] = None, temperature: Optional[float] = None, top_p: Optional[float] = None, presence_penalty: Optional[float] = None, frequency_penalty: Optional[float] = None, reasoning_effort: Optional[str] = None, verbosity: Optional[str] = None, extra: Optional[Mapping[str, Any]] = None, ) -> Dict[str, Any]: """Build kwargs for ``openai.OpenAI / AzureOpenAI .chat.completions.create``. Splat the result directly: ``client.chat.completions.create(**kwargs)``. Unsupported parameters are silently omitted for reasoning models; legacy deployments retain the historical behaviour. """ family = get_model_family(model) kwargs: Dict[str, Any] = {"model": model} # ---- output budget ---- if max_tokens is not None and max_tokens != -1: if family == "reasoning": kwargs["max_completion_tokens"] = scale_max_tokens_for_reasoning(int(max_tokens)) else: kwargs["max_tokens"] = int(max_tokens) # ---- sampling ---- if family == "legacy": kwargs.update(_drop_none({ "temperature": temperature, "top_p": top_p, "presence_penalty": presence_penalty, "frequency_penalty": frequency_penalty, })) else: for key, value in ( ("temperature", temperature), ("top_p", top_p), ("presence_penalty", presence_penalty), ("frequency_penalty", frequency_penalty), ): if value is not None: logging.debug( "Dropping unsupported parameter '%s' for reasoning model '%s'", key, model, ) # ---- reasoning controls ---- if family == "reasoning": effort = get_reasoning_effort(reasoning_effort) if effort is not None: kwargs["reasoning_effort"] = effort verb = get_verbosity(verbosity) if verb is not None: # ``verbosity`` is not a top-level kwarg in openai-python <= 1.65.x; # route it via ``extra_body`` so it lands in the JSON without a # TypeError from the SDK. kwargs.setdefault("extra_body", {})["verbosity"] = verb # ---- caller-supplied extras (already filtered) ---- if extra: for key, value in extra.items(): if value is None: continue if family == "reasoning" and key in _SAMPLING_KEYS: continue kwargs[key] = value return kwargs def build_langchain_chat_kwargs( deployment_name: str, *, max_tokens: Optional[int] = None, temperature: Optional[float] = None, top_p: Optional[float] = None, reasoning_effort: Optional[str] = None, verbosity: Optional[str] = None, ) -> Dict[str, Any]: """Build kwargs for ``langchain_openai.AzureChatOpenAI`` / ``ChatOpenAI``. Older ``langchain-openai`` releases don't expose ``max_completion_tokens`` as a top-level kwarg, so we forward it through ``model_kwargs`` (which langchain passes straight to the SDK). """ family = get_model_family(deployment_name) kwargs: Dict[str, Any] = {} model_kwargs: Dict[str, Any] = {} if max_tokens is not None and max_tokens != -1: if family == "reasoning": model_kwargs["max_completion_tokens"] = scale_max_tokens_for_reasoning(int(max_tokens)) else: kwargs["max_tokens"] = int(max_tokens) if family == "reasoning": effort = get_reasoning_effort(reasoning_effort) if effort is not None: model_kwargs["reasoning_effort"] = effort verb = get_verbosity(verbosity) if verb is not None: model_kwargs.setdefault("extra_body", {})["verbosity"] = verb else: if temperature is not None: kwargs["temperature"] = temperature if top_p is not None: kwargs["top_p"] = top_p if model_kwargs: kwargs["model_kwargs"] = model_kwargs return kwargs def get_system_role(model_or_deployment: Optional[str] = None) -> str: """Return ``"developer"`` for reasoning models when opted in, ``"system"`` otherwise. Defaulting to ``"system"`` preserves compatibility with LangChain prompt templates and SDK helpers that don't yet recognise the new role. Opt in with ``OPENAI_USE_DEVELOPER_ROLE=1`` once your stack supports it. """ if not is_reasoning_model(model_or_deployment): return "system" raw = os.getenv("OPENAI_USE_DEVELOPER_ROLE", "") return "developer" if raw.strip().lower() in {"1", "true", "yes", "on"} else "system" 4.2 What this buys you Every direct-SDK call collapses to two lines: from openai import AzureOpenAI from model_compat import build_openai_chat_kwargs client = AzureOpenAI( azure_endpoint=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT"], api_version=os.environ["OPENAI_API_VERSION"], api_key=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY"], ) kwargs = build_openai_chat_kwargs( model=os.environ["OPENAI_ENGINE"], max_tokens=4096, # automatically becomes max_completion_tokens for GPT-5 temperature=0.2, # automatically dropped for GPT-5 reasoning_effort="low", # automatically dropped for GPT-4 ) response = client.chat.completions.create( messages=[ {"role": "system", "content": "You are a helpful assistant."}, {"role": "user", "content": user_input}, ], **kwargs, ) The same call site now correctly targets gpt-5.1, gpt-4o, gpt-4-32k, o3-mini, or any future deployment whose name embeds the family - and you can override with the OPENAI_MODEL_FAMILY env var when the deployment alias is opaque. 4.3 Raw HTTP call sites Some legacy code paths bypass the SDK and POST JSON directly. The same builder works there: import json import requests from model_compat import build_openai_chat_kwargs, get_system_role deployment = os.environ["OPENAI_ENGINE"] api_version = os.environ["OPENAI_API_VERSION"] endpoint = ( f"{os.environ['AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT']}/openai/deployments/{deployment}" f"/chat/completions?api-version={api_version}" ) payload = { "messages": [ {"role": get_system_role(deployment), "content": system_prompt}, {"role": "user", "content": user_prompt}, ], } # Splat the kwargs into the payload, then strip the SDK-only ``model`` key. payload.update(build_openai_chat_kwargs( model=deployment, max_tokens=800, temperature=0.7, top_p=0.95, reasoning_effort="low", )) payload.pop("model", None) # ``model`` is encoded in the URL for Azure payload.pop("extra_body", None) # already on the payload root resp = requests.post( endpoint, headers={"Content-Type": "application/json", "api-key": api_key}, data=json.dumps(payload), timeout=60, ) resp.raise_for_status() 5. LangChain: the hidden stop parameter langchain.chains.sql_database.query.create_sql_query_chain calls llm.bind(stop=["\nSQLResult:"]) internally to terminate the model's output before the example block in its prompt. That stop value is forwarded to the SDK on every invocation. GPT-5.1 rejects it: openai.BadRequestError: Error code: 400 - {'error': { 'message': "Unsupported parameter: 'stop' is not supported with this model.", 'type': 'invalid_request_error', 'param': 'stop', }} You can't reach into the chain to disable it. The clean fix is a thin AzureChatOpenAI subclass that drops stop for reasoning models only: 5.1 langchain_compat.py """LangChain-side compatibility shim for reasoning-class deployments.""" from __future__ import annotations from typing import Any, List, Optional from langchain_core.callbacks.manager import ( AsyncCallbackManagerForLLMRun, CallbackManagerForLLMRun, ) from langchain_core.messages import BaseMessage from langchain_core.outputs import ChatResult from langchain_openai import AzureChatOpenAI # use ChatOpenAI for non-Azure from model_compat import is_reasoning_model class ReasoningSafeAzureChatOpenAI(AzureChatOpenAI): """``AzureChatOpenAI`` variant that hides parameters reasoning models reject. Reasoning models (GPT-5.x, o1/o3/o4) return HTTP 400 when a request payload carries ``stop``. LangChain's SQL helpers unconditionally bind it, so the unsupported parameter reaches the SDK regardless of how the caller configured the LLM. This subclass strips ``stop`` for reasoning deployments while forwarding it unchanged for legacy GPT-4 / GPT-3.5 deployments - the behaviour is byte-identical to upstream LangChain for those models. """ def _deployment_id(self) -> str: # ``langchain-openai`` >= 0.2 exposes ``azure_deployment``; older # releases use ``deployment_name``. Either may be set by the caller. return ( getattr(self, "azure_deployment", None) or getattr(self, "deployment_name", None) or "" ) def _generate( self, messages: List[BaseMessage], stop: Optional[List[str]] = None, run_manager: Optional[CallbackManagerForLLMRun] = None, **kwargs: Any, ) -> ChatResult: if is_reasoning_model(self._deployment_id()): stop = None return super()._generate(messages, stop=stop, run_manager=run_manager, **kwargs) async def _agenerate( self, messages: List[BaseMessage], stop: Optional[List[str]] = None, run_manager: Optional[AsyncCallbackManagerForLLMRun] = None, **kwargs: Any, ) -> ChatResult: if is_reasoning_model(self._deployment_id()): stop = None return await super()._agenerate(messages, stop=stop, run_manager=run_manager, **kwargs) Use it as a drop-in replacement: from langchain_compat import ReasoningSafeAzureChatOpenAI from model_compat import build_langchain_chat_kwargs llm_kwargs = build_langchain_chat_kwargs( deployment_name=os.environ["OPENAI_ENGINE"], max_tokens=6000, temperature=0, reasoning_effort="low", ) llm = ReasoningSafeAzureChatOpenAI( azure_endpoint=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT"], azure_deployment=os.environ["OPENAI_ENGINE"], openai_api_version=os.environ["OPENAI_API_VERSION"], api_key=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY"], **llm_kwargs, ) That single substitution makes create_sql_query_chain, SQLDatabaseChain, and the ChatOpenAI-based RAG helpers all work against GPT-5.1 without any other changes. 6. The second LangChain gotcha: prose where SQL should be create_sql_query_chain is documented to return the literal string "I don't know" (or a similar fallback) when the LLM cannot form a query. The default code path takes the chain output and runs it against the database: sql = chain.invoke({...}) # -> "I don't know" result = db.run(sql) # -> sends "I don't know" to pyodbc The database faithfully returns: [42000] Unclosed quotation mark after the character string 't know'. (105) Which surfaces to the end user as a misleading "SQL syntax error". The mitigation is a one-line guard that validates the chain output looks like SQL before execution: import re _SQL_START_RE = re.compile( r"^\s*(?:WITH|SELECT|INSERT|UPDATE|DELETE|CREATE|DROP|ALTER|MERGE|EXEC|EXECUTE|TRUNCATE)\b", re.IGNORECASE, ) def looks_like_sql(text: str) -> bool: """True only if ``text`` starts with a recognised SQL DML/DDL keyword.""" if not text or not text.strip(): return False return bool(_SQL_START_RE.match(text)) sql = extract_sql_query(chain.invoke({...})) if not looks_like_sql(sql): logging.warning("SQL chain returned a non-SQL response: %r", sql[:200]) return ( "I couldn't form a SQL query for that question. " "Please rephrase or add more context." ) result = db.run(sql) This isn't specific to GPT-5.1 - it's good hygiene for any LLM that backs a SQL agent - but the failure mode becomes much more frequent on reasoning models because they're better at refusing. 7. Cleaning Markdown out of create_sql_query_chain output Reasoning models like to wrap their answer in a markdown fence and append a "Note:" or "Explanation:" paragraph. None of that survives db.run(). A defensive extract_sql_query handles all the variants: import re def extract_sql_query(text: str) -> str: """Strip markdown fences, leading prose, and trailing explanations.""" # 1) Prefer SQL inside a markdown code fence. m = re.search(r"```(?:sql|SQL|Sql)?\s*\n(.*?)\n```", text, re.DOTALL) if m: text = m.group(1) text = text.strip() # 2) Drop any prose *before* the SQL by jumping to the first SQL keyword. m = re.search( r"(?im)^\s*(WITH|SELECT|INSERT|UPDATE|DELETE|CREATE|DROP|ALTER|MERGE|EXEC|EXECUTE|TRUNCATE)\b", text, ) if m: text = text[m.start(1):] # 3) Cut at the first "Explanation:" / "Note:" / "This query..." marker. m = re.compile( r"(?im)^\s*(?:Explanation|Note|Notes|Here(?:'|\u2019)?s|" r"This\s+(?:query|SQL|statement|returns|counts|selects|will|gets|finds)|" r"The\s+(?:query|SQL|above|result|statement)|" r"Result|Results|Description|Output|Answer)\b[^\n]*" ).search(text) if m: text = text[: m.start()].rstrip() # 4) Drop any trailing fence that survived step 1. if text.endswith("```"): text = text[:-3].rstrip() return text.strip() 8. Package versioning The bare minimum your requirements.txt / environment.yml needs: Package Last GPT-4-only version First GPT-5.x-safe version Notes openai 1.55.x 1.65.x (recommend 1.65.4+) Earlier versions reject max_completion_tokens and reasoning_effort as unknown kwargs langchain-openai 0.2.14 0.3.7+ 0.3.x line exposes azure_deployment and forwards model_kwargs correctly to the new SDK langchain 0.3.14 0.3.21+ Pin together with langchain-openai and langchain-core langchain-core 0.3.29 0.3.49+ Update in lockstep with the others langchain-community 0.3.14 0.3.20+ Mostly transitive; needed for SQLDatabase helpers tiktoken 0.7.x 0.8.0+ Encodings for GPT-5.1 ship in 0.8.0; older versions fall back to cl100k_base for unknown models tokencost (optional) 0.1.16 0.1.20+ Update for GPT-5.x price tables Azure OpenAI API version 2024-12-01-preview 2025-03-01-preview First version that ships reasoning_effort and the GPT-5.x routing Pin exact versions after testing - LangChain has a habit of moving public re-exports between minor releases. requirements.txt snippet: openai==1.65.4 langchain==0.3.21 langchain-core==0.3.49 langchain-openai==0.3.7 langchain-community==0.3.20 tiktoken==0.8.0 9. New GPT-5.x knobs worth using Once you're on a reasoning deployment, two new parameters become available. Both are optional, both default to a sensible value, and both are stripped by the kwargs builder above when the target is a legacy model. reasoning_effort minimal - one-shot lookups, classification. low - deterministic structured output (SQL, JSON-schema extraction, rule-based rewrites). Lowest cost overhead. medium (default) - RAG, summarisation, normal Q&A. high - multi-step analytical reasoning, complex code synthesis. A useful pattern is to choose the level by task profile rather than at the call site: TASK_EFFORT = { "sql": "low", "structured_extract": "low", "kg_cleaning": "low", "rag_qa": "medium", "vision": "medium", "analytical": "high", } verbosity low | medium | high. Controls the length of the response, not its substance. Useful for grounding chat UIs where you want crisp answers - set low for /answer endpoints and high for "explain like a senior engineer" panels. Note: in openai-python <= 1.65.x, verbosity is not yet a top-level keyword argument; pass it through extra_body (the builder above already does this). developer role GPT-5.x prefers {"role": "developer", "content": "..."} for instructions that previously used system. The change is non-breaking on the Azure side - system is still accepted as an alias - but some downstream LangChain prompt templates predate the role and will reject it on construction. Treat developer as opt-in (OPENAI_USE_DEVELOPER_ROLE=1) for now; flip the default after your prompt-template version is known good. 10. Auditing your existing prompts When the wire-level migration is done your service will talk to GPT-5.x - but that doesn't mean it says the right thing. Reasoning models read prompts differently in ways that won't show up as 400s: They take instructions more literally. A prompt that worked when GPT-4o rounded the corners may surface every edge case verbatim. They refuse more often. "I don't know" / "I cannot help with that" are more frequent because reasoning models are less willing to confabulate. They ignore "be concise" / "be terse". Use the new verbosity knob. Step-by-step / chain-of-thought instructions become redundant. The model already reasons internally; extra "think before you answer" prose competes with its own chain of thought and often hurts output quality. Negative-only instructions can backfire. "Never output X" prompts occasionally cause refusals where you'd rather have a workaround. 10.1 Build a prompt regression harness Capture every system+user prompt your service emits in a CSV, then replay each one against both deployments and diff the output. The diff is the single most useful artefact you can produce before the cutover: # prompt_audit.py - minimal differential tester import csv from openai import AzureOpenAI from model_compat import build_openai_chat_kwargs LEGACY = "gpt-4o" REASONING = "gpt-5.1" client = AzureOpenAI( azure_endpoint=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT"], api_version=os.environ["OPENAI_API_VERSION"], api_key=os.environ["AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY"], ) def run(model: str, system: str, user: str) -> str: kw = build_openai_chat_kwargs( model=model, max_tokens=4096, temperature=0.2, # auto-dropped for reasoning reasoning_effort="medium", # auto-dropped for legacy ) resp = client.chat.completions.create( messages=[ {"role": "system", "content": system}, {"role": "user", "content": user}, ], **kw, ) return resp.choices[0].message.content or "" with open("prompts.csv") as f_in, open("diff.tsv", "w", newline="") as f_out: writer = csv.writer(f_out, delimiter="\t") writer.writerow(["id", "legacy_first80", "reasoning_first80", "len_legacy", "len_new", "identical"]) for row in csv.DictReader(f_in): legacy = run(LEGACY, row["system"], row["user"]) new = run(REASONING, row["system"], row["user"]) writer.writerow([ row["id"], legacy[:80].replace("\n", " "), new[:80].replace("\n", " "), len(legacy), len(new), legacy.strip() == new.strip(), ]) Capture three signals per prompt - they're enough to triage 95% of drift: Format compliance. Did the output still parse as the expected JSON / YAML / Markdown / SQL? Run your existing downstream parser on both columns. Token cost delta. Reasoning models tend to be more verbose by default. Anything beyond +20% is a candidate for the verbosity="low" knob. Semantic drift. Spot-check 5–10% of rows by hand. You're looking for changes in intent, not changes in wording. 10.2 Common rewrites to make prompts model-agnostic The goal isn't to write two prompts. It's to write one prompt that produces correct output on both families by moving constraints out of the natural-language body and into the request shape. 10.2a. Format constraints belong in response_format, not the prose Don't: Output ONLY a JSON object with keys `name` and `score`. Do not include any explanation. Do not wrap in markdown. Do not say anything else. Do: resp = client.chat.completions.create( messages=[...], response_format={ "type": "json_schema", "json_schema": { "name": "scored_entity", "schema": { "type": "object", "properties": { "name": {"type": "string"}, "score": {"type": "number"}, }, "required": ["name", "score"], "additionalProperties": False, }, "strict": True, }, }, **kw, ) response_format is honoured by both gpt-4o (>= 2024-08-06) and the entire GPT-5.x line. The prompt loses three lines of brittle natural-language constraints and you get schema-validated output for free. 10.2b. Replace "think step by step" with reasoning_effort Don't: Let's think step by step. First identify the entity. Then find the category. Then compute the score. Then format the answer. Do: delete the prose and pass reasoning_effort="medium" (or "high") for reasoning deployments. The kwargs builder drops the parameter automatically for GPT-4 models, so the same prompt now produces: step-by-step reasoning internally on GPT-5.x (lower output token cost), the same final answer on GPT-4o that the verbose prompt used to elicit. 10.2c. Replace temperature-based variety with n sampling If your code relied on temperature=0.9 to get diverse completions, GPT-5.x will return roughly the same answer every time. Generate variety the explicit way: resp = client.chat.completions.create(messages=[...], n=5, **kw) candidates = [c.message.content for c in resp.choices] Or call the model N times with slightly different framings. Both patterns work against either family with no further code changes. 10.2d. Move procedural instructions to the developer role For multi-step workflows, the new developer role gives clearer separation between what the system enforces and what the user is asking: messages = [ {"role": get_system_role(deployment), "content": role_card_for_assistant}, {"role": "developer", "content": procedural_instructions}, {"role": "user", "content": user_question}, ] get_system_role returns "system" for legacy models and "developer" for reasoning models opted in via OPENAI_USE_DEVELOPER_ROLE=1. Once your LangChain templates support the new role you can flip the default. 10.2e. Add a literal-execution header for strict formats For prompts where the exact output shape matters (table generation, SQL with a fixed column order, structured incident reports), prepend an explicit literal-execution header so reasoning models don't drift into "helpful improvements": LITERAL_EXECUTION_HEADER = ( "Execution mode: follow the instructions below literally and in order. " "Do not infer intent, skip, reorder, merge, or add steps. Honour the " "exact formatting, tone, and verbosity specified. If a step is " "ambiguous, respond with the literal interpretation and flag the " "ambiguity instead of guessing." ) def apply_literal_execution(prompt: str) -> str: if LITERAL_EXECUTION_HEADER in prompt: return prompt return f"{LITERAL_EXECUTION_HEADER}\n\n{prompt}" It's a no-op on GPT-4o (the older models already follow instructions literally enough) and a meaningful guard rail on GPT-5.1. Wire it behind an OPENAI_LITERAL_EXECUTION flag so you can disable it without redeploying. 10.3 A prompt-shaped checklist Run every prompt your service emits past these questions: Question Action Does it specify output format in prose? Move to response_format (10.2a) Does it include "think step by step"? Remove; set reasoning_effort (10.2b) Does it set tone constraints ("be concise")? Use verbosity Does it use negative-only instructions ("never X")? Add positive alternative ("do Y instead") Does it embed example outputs with values that would change? Replace concrete values with placeholder tokens (<VALUE>) Does it rely on temperature > 0 for variety? Use n=K sampling (10.2c) Is the system prompt > 2k tokens? Split into role-card (system) + procedure (developer) Does output ordering matter? Add the literal-execution header (10.2e) 10.4 Score before you ship Don't approve a rewritten prompt by eyeballing one example. Score it: Format compliance rate. Percentage of N=50 outputs that pass your existing downstream parser / JSON schema validation. Token cost delta. Cap regression at +20% versus the legacy baseline. Beyond that, dial verbosity="low" or tighten the prompt. Latency p50 / p95 delta. Reasoning models add tail latency. If your SLA is tight, set reasoning_effort="low" for the path or move it to a background queue. A prompt that regresses on any of those by more than your tolerance window ships behind a feature flag with rollback wired in. 11. Testing strategy Two test layers catch >90% of regressions: Family-classification tests import pytest from model_compat import get_model_family, build_openai_chat_kwargs @pytest.mark.parametrize("name,expected", [ ("gpt-5.1", "reasoning"), ("gpt5", "reasoning"), ("gpt-5-prod-eu", "reasoning"), ("o3-mini", "reasoning"), ("o1", "reasoning"), ("gpt-4o", "legacy"), ("gpt-4", "legacy"), ("gpt-4-32k", "legacy"), ("gpt-35-turbo", "legacy"), ("", "legacy"), # unknown -> fail closed to legacy (None, "legacy"), ]) def test_family(name, expected): assert get_model_family(name) == expected def test_kwargs_for_reasoning_drops_temperature(): kw = build_openai_chat_kwargs( model="gpt-5.1", max_tokens=1000, temperature=0.2, top_p=0.9, reasoning_effort="low", ) assert "temperature" not in kw assert "top_p" not in kw assert kw["max_completion_tokens"] >= 4096 # floor applied assert kw["reasoning_effort"] == "low" def test_kwargs_for_legacy_keeps_temperature(): kw = build_openai_chat_kwargs( model="gpt-4o", max_tokens=1000, temperature=0.2, top_p=0.9, ) assert kw["max_tokens"] == 1000 assert kw["temperature"] == 0.2 assert kw["top_p"] == 0.9 assert "reasoning_effort" not in kw Wire-level smoke tests For each LLM call site you maintain, write a single integration test that exercises the chain against a real (or mocked) endpoint and asserts: HTTP 200, non-empty content, finish_reason != "length" (so you catch silent truncation), (optional) classifier-style assertions against a golden output. Run those tests once against the legacy deployment and once against the new one - same test code, two OPENAI_ENGINE values. 12. Things that don't change It's easy to over-correct. Several pieces of plumbing keep working without modification: Authentication. AAD token providers, managed identity, and API keys are unchanged. Embeddings. text-embedding-3-small, text-embedding-3-large, and text-embedding-ada-002 are not part of the reasoning generation; the embeddings call shape is identical. Function calling / tool use. Same JSON schema, same response shape. Streaming. SSE format is unchanged. Token counters. tiktoken still works, but bump to 0.8.0+ so the new model name resolves to the right encoding instead of silently falling back to cl100k_base. 13. Next steps If you only do four things from this post, do these - in order: Deploy a GPT-5.1 model side-by-side with your current GPT-4 deployment in Microsoft Foundry. Keep the GPT-4 deployment live; you'll need both for the parallel-run period. Drop model_compat.py and langchain_compat.py into your project (Sections 4 and 5). Replace every AzureChatOpenAI(...) construction with ReasoningSafeAzureChatOpenAI and route every kwargs literal through the builders. Run the prompt-audit harness (Section 10.1) against your top 50 most frequently invoked prompts. Triage the diff with the checklist in 10.3. Roll out behind a percentage-based flag. Start at 5% of traffic for 24 hours, compare quality and cost telemetry against the GPT-4o baseline, then ramp. Reference material Azure OpenAI in Microsoft Foundry - model overview Azure OpenAI model retirements and deprecations Reasoning models in Azure OpenAI Structured Outputs in Azure OpenAI openai-python SDK changelog langchain-openai release notes Talk to us Open an issue on the Microsoft Foundry GitHub samples repository if you hit a gap this post didn't cover. Share your migration story or numbers in the comments below - field data is the fastest way to make this guide better for the next team. If you operate a regulated workload (finance, health, public sector) and need help sequencing the rollout with your model retirement deadlines, reach out to your Microsoft account team or a Microsoft Foundry partner. GPT-5.x is the first major model bump in two years that requires code changes - but the changes collapse into one small compatibility module and a one-line LangChain subclass. With those in place your code is forwards-compatible (works on reasoning models today) and backwards- compatible (still works on every GPT-4 deployment you haven't migrated yet). The investment pays a recurring dividend: when the next reasoning bump ships, the only file that needs updating is model_compat.py. Appendix A - Minimal .env template # Endpoint and auth (unchanged between families) AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT=https://<resource>.openai.azure.com AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY=<key> # The deployment name decides the family. The classifier reads it. OPENAI_ENGINE=gpt-5.1 OPENAI_API_VERSION=2025-03-01-preview # Optional override for opaque deployment names # OPENAI_MODEL_FAMILY=reasoning # or "legacy" # Optional reasoning controls (ignored for legacy deployments) OPENAI_REASONING_EFFORT=medium OPENAI_VERBOSITY=medium OPENAI_REASONING_TOKEN_SCALE=2.5 OPENAI_REASONING_TOKEN_FLOOR=4096 # Flip when your LangChain templates support it # OPENAI_USE_DEVELOPER_ROLE=1 Appendix B - One-liner sanity checks # Does a deployment name classify correctly? python -c "from model_compat import get_model_family; print(get_model_family('gpt-5.1'))" # -> reasoning # Does the LangChain LLM strip ``stop`` when the deployment is GPT-5.1? python -c " from langchain_compat import ReasoningSafeAzureChatOpenAI import inspect; print(inspect.getsource(ReasoningSafeAzureChatOpenAI._generate)) " Companion repository: drop model_compat.py and langchain_compat.py next to each other in your utils/ package. They are zero-dependency on import, so you can vendor them into any service - web, function, batch job - without dragging Azure SDK or LangChain into module-load.
Now in Foundry: Tongyi-MAI Z-Image-Turbo, with FLUX.1-schnell and SDXL base 1.0
This week's Model Mondays edition pairs three models available through the Hugging Face collection in Microsoft Foundry: Tongyi-MAI's Z-Image-Turbo, a new designed for lower latency on a single GPU and native bilingual text rendering; Black Forest Labs' FLUX.1-schnell, a 12B rectified flow transformer distilled to 1–4 step inference and one of the most adopted open-weight image models since its 2024 release; and Stability AI's stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0 (SDXL), a latent diffusion research model that can be used to generate and modify images based on text prompts. Models of the week Tongyi-MAI: Z-Image-Turbo Model Specs Parameters / size: 6B (BF16) Resolution: Up to 1024×1024 native Primary task: Text-to-image generation (English and Chinese) Why it's interesting (Spotlight) Scalable Single-Stream Diffusion Transformer (S3-DiT) architecture: Z-Image concatenates text tokens, visual semantic tokens, and image VAE tokens into a single unified input stream rather than running text and image through separate branches. This single-stream design can improve parameter efficiency relative to dual-stream DiT architectures at the same capacity. See the Z-Image technical report for details. 8-step inference at sub-second latency, fits in 16GB VRAM: Z-Image-Turbo is distilled with Decoupled Distribution Matching Distillation (Decoupled-DMD) and further refined with DMDR, a method that fuses DMD with reinforcement learning during post-training. The result is a model that runs 8 Number-of-Function-Evaluations (NFE) per image with no Classifier-Free Guidance (CFG)—which roughly halves the per-step compute compared to CFG-based inference. See the Decoupled-DMD and DMDR papers. Native bilingual text rendering and strong instruction adherence: Unlike most open-weight image models, which struggle with legible in-image text, Z-Image-Turbo renders complex English and Chinese text accurately which is useful for posters, signage, packaging mockups, and marketing creative. Try it Imagine you're a community programs coordinator at your city's parks department, planning a new summer event series — a "Cake Picnic in the Park" — designed to bring neighbors together over food in shared green space. The event is a few weeks out. You haven't booked bakery partners yet, so no actual cake exists, and you need marketing assets this week to start driving sign-ups: a hero image for the registration page, a flyer for community centers and libraries, social tiles for the city's channels. Use the prompt below and a photorealistic image, that can now be scaled to become additional assets like printed flyers or social images in minutes using image editing tools (or another model). Prompt: A round layered cake displayed on a white ceramic cake stand, topped with glossy fresh red cherries and smooth pastel pink buttercream frosting piped in delicate rosettes around the edge. One generous slice has been cleanly cut and removed from the front, revealing a perfect cross-section: four distinct horizontal layers alternating between soft pink sponge cake and fluffy white vanilla cream frosting. Professional bakery photography, soft natural window light from the left, shallow depth of field, marble countertop, warm and inviting atmosphere, photorealistic detail on the cake texture, cherry highlights, and frosting swirls. Black Forest Labs: FLUX.1-schnell Model Specs Parameters / size: 12B (rectified flow transformer) Resolution: Flexible up to 2 megapixels Primary task: Text-to-image generation Why it's interesting (Spotlight) Rectified flow transformer with adversarial distillation for 1–4 step inference: FLUX.1-schnell is the distilled, Apache 2.0 sibling of the FLUX.1 family. It uses a rectified flow formulation (a diffusion variant that learns straight-line probability paths between noise and data, reducing the number of solver steps needed) and is further compressed with latent adversarial diffusion distillation. The model generates high quality images in for latency-sensitive workloads. Permissive licensing for commercial use: Released under Apache 2.0, FLUX.1-schnell can be used for personal, scientific, and commercial purposes. This has driven broad adoption across product features that need an open, redistributable image backbone. Strong prompt adherence at its parameter range: At 12B parameters, FLUX.1-schnell sits between the SDXL family and frontier proprietary image models, and it remains a common reference point for evaluating open image generation prompt following—particularly for complex compositional prompts and longer captions—roughly two years after its initial release. Try it Hugging Face Spaces give developers the ability to experiment and try new models before deploying them. Test out a few prompts here: https://black-forest-labs-flux-1-schnell.hf.space then when you are ready, deploy the model in Microsoft Foundry. Stability AI: stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0 stabilityai/stable-diffusion-xl-base-1.0 · Hugging Face Model Specs Parameters / size: 2.6B UNet (≈3.5B total with text encoders) Resolution: 1024×1024 native Primary task: Text-to-image generation Why it's interesting (Spotlight) Dual text encoder design and an ensemble-of-experts pipeline: SDXL uses two pretrained text encoders—OpenCLIP-ViT/G and CLIP-ViT/L—concatenated to capture both broad semantic alignment and finer-grained token-level cues. It can be run standalone or paired with the SDXL refiner in an ensemble-of-experts pipeline where the base model handles early denoising and the refiner specializes in the final steps. See the SDXL report for the original training and architecture details. CreativeML Open RAIL++-M licensing for managed deployments: SDXL is distributed under the CreativeML Open RAIL++-M license, which permits commercial use and downstream fine-tuning with documented use restrictions. Try it To go deeper on SDXL, take a look at Stability AI's generative-models GitHub repository, which implements the most popular diffusion frameworks for both training and inference and continues to expand with new capabilities like distillation. Getting started You can deploy open-source Hugging Face models directly in Microsoft Foundry in two ways. The first by browsing the Hugging Face collection in the Foundry model catalog and deploying to managed endpoints in just a few clicks. The second way is direct through the Hugging Face Hub, select any supported model and then choose "Deploy on Microsoft Foundry", which brings you straight into Azure. Learn how to discover models and deploy them using Microsoft Foundry documentation: Follow along the Model Mondays series and access the GitHub to stay up to date on the latest Read Hugging Face on Azure docs Learn about one-click deployments from the Hugging Face Hub on Microsoft Foundry Explore models in Microsoft Foundry"Not Available in Your Region" Isn't a Dead End: A Security Assessment of Global Deployments
You want to build with the latest Microsoft Foundry model. You checked the regional availability, and it isn't there yet — only Global Standard. Now you're weighing the capability you actually need against your instinct to keep everything in a regional SKU. This post is for that moment. This is a more common situation than people realise. Microsoft typically releases new and preview models on Global first, then expands into specific regions over time as capacity is built out. It isn't an oversight. It's how Microsoft makes new capabilities available to the broadest set of customers as quickly as possible. If you want those capabilities, Global is the path. The good news is that the path is well-paved. Microsoft Foundry Global Standard is a secure, enterprise-grade deployment type backed by the same Azure controls you already rely on, with explicit contractual commitments on how your data is used. The data protection guarantees don't change because the model is newer or because regional capacity hasn't caught up — they're the same on day one of a new model on Global as they are on a model that's been deployed regionally for a year. The rest of this post walks through what Microsoft commits to, what you get out of the box, what you add on top, and the small number of cases where Global is genuinely the wrong choice. It's written for three audiences: Developers who want to know if they're allowed to ship on Global. Solution architects weighing the model choice against latency, quota, and resilience. Security architects who need to map Foundry's behaviour to enterprise controls before they sign off. Where does my data actually go? This is the question that drives most of the concern, and the answer has two parts. Mixing them up is what causes the confusion. Data at rest stays in the Azure geography of your Foundry resource. That includes your configuration, uploaded files, stored artifacts, and logs. This is true for Global deployments, exactly the same as it is for regional ones. Microsoft commits to this in the Azure data residency page. Data in processing is different. When you send a prompt, the model processes it in memory for a few hundred milliseconds and returns a response. For Global deployments, that processing can happen in any Azure region where the model is hosted. This is how Microsoft gives you the highest available capacity and the broadest model access. The prompt and response are not persisted as part of inference processing in the region that processed them. Once you separate "where my data lives" from "where the request runs," the residency picture becomes much clearer. Your customer data lives where you put it. The model that processes that data runs on Microsoft's global fleet. You can read the official description on the Microsoft Foundry deployment types page. What Microsoft commits These commitments are contractual, not marketing language — they sit inside Microsoft's Product Terms and Data Protection Addendum. According to the data privacy page for Azure Direct Models, your prompts and completions are not used to train Microsoft or OpenAI models, and your fine-tuned models are exclusively yours. Microsoft is also explicit that your data does not touch consumer OpenAI services: "Microsoft hosts the Azure Direct Models in Microsoft's Azure environment and Azure Direct Models do NOT interact with any services operated by Azure Direct Model providers, for example, OpenAI (e.g. ChatGPT, or the OpenAI API)." For partner and community models served through serverless APIs, the model catalog data privacy page confirms that those models are stateless and that Microsoft does not use prompts or outputs to train any model. What Global does NOT do A Global deployment does not replicate your stored data into other regions, does not expose your prompts to consumer OpenAI services, and does not use your inputs or outputs for training. The only cross‑region behavior is the transient execution of model inference, which is stateless and not customer‑addressable. What Global gives you on day one Before you configure anything yourself, a Global Standard deployment already includes the following: Encryption at rest using FIPS 140-2 compliant 256-bit AES with Microsoft-managed keys, applied transparently. See the Microsoft Foundry architecture page. Encryption in transit using TLS 1.2 or higher, enforced by the platform. Microsoft Entra ID authentication with Azure RBAC. Foundry separates control-plane actions (like creating deployments) from data-plane actions (like invoking models), so you can grant least privilege without writing custom roles. Tenant isolation. Your Foundry resource lives in your subscription, your data lives in your tenant, and any fine-tuned models you create are exclusively yours. Compliance inheritance. Foundry runs on Azure and inherits Azure's compliance controls, including ISO 27001, SOC 1/2/3, HIPAA, PCI DSS, FedRAMP, and many others. The current authoritative list is in the Azure compliance offerings catalogue and the Microsoft Trust Center. This baseline, with no extra configuration, already meets the security posture most enterprise teams target for new workloads. The controls you already know Securing Microsoft Foundry uses the same building blocks as securing any other Azure PaaS service. If your team already knows how to lock down Azure Storage or Azure SQL, you already know how to lock down Foundry. Developers see familiar patterns. Architects get a clean fit into the landing zone. Security architects review the same control surfaces they review elsewhere. The controls you'd apply are exactly what you'd expect: Private networking: Map the Foundry resource to a private IP using Private Link, back it with Private DNS, disable public network access, and route egress through Azure Firewall or an NVA. For agent workloads, Microsoft publishes a private networking template for Foundry Agent Service you can deploy with Bicep or Terraform. Note that Private Link secures the path to the endpoint, not the routing of requests inside the model fleet — you get a private network path without giving up Global's capacity benefits. Azure APIM GenAI gateway: Put Azure API Management's GenAI gateway in front of your Foundry Global deployments to control who can call models, how much they can use, and under what policies, independent of where inference runs. It enforces central auth, per‑consumer token limits, logging, and policy controls, turning Global deployments from “globally available” into centrally governed and auditable services. Identity and secrets: Use Managed Identity for application-to-model calls and avoid embedding API keys in code. Apply Conditional Access to admin sign-in and use Privileged Identity Management for just-in-time elevation on admin roles. Customer-managed keys: If your compliance regime requires key ownership, enable CMK on the Foundry resource via Azure Key Vault for rotation, revocation, and separation of duties. Logging and monitoring: Send diagnostics to a customer-owned Log Analytics workspace, enable the Azure Activity Log, and alert on token-usage spikes, unusual source IPs, and repeated authentication failures. Governance at scale: Use Azure Policy to enforce baselines (allowed locations, mandatory diagnostics, required private access) across your tenant, and pair it with Microsoft Defender for Cloud for continuous posture management. The risk that deserves attention: Data Exfiltration The most common security risk in any LLM deployment, on any SKU, is not Microsoft's infrastructure. It's the application layer. Examples include over-broad RAG retrieval pulling data the user shouldn't see, a tool-calling agent reaching an unintended destination, or a prompt that quietly echoes PII into a downstream log. These risks exist on Global, Data Zone, and Regional deployments equally. Choosing a more restrictive SKU does not mitigate them. The good news is that the mitigations are well understood and entirely under your control: Use Private Endpoints for Storage, AI Search, Cosmos DB, and any other backing services your application uses for RAG, so retrieval traffic stays off the public internet. For tool-calling and agent scenarios, route outbound traffic through Azure Firewall with FQDN filtering, and keep an explicit allowlist of destinations the agent is permitted to reach. Apply DLP and redaction at the application layer for high-risk data classes, before that data ever becomes part of a prompt. Treat prompts and completions as transient. Don't persist them unless you have a specific, auditable reason to do so. Doing this work on a Global deployment gives you exactly the same protection as doing it on a regional one. Is Global Deployment right for you? For most teams building on Microsoft Foundry, the answer is yes. Global Standard gives you: The highest default quotas and the broadest model availability in the catalogue. First access to new models and features, often weeks or months ahead of regional rollouts. Elastic absorption of demand spikes through Microsoft's global capacity pool. A simpler architecture, with no regional duplication or custom failover logic. The full Azure security stack: Entra ID, RBAC, Private Link, CMK, Azure Policy, Defender for Cloud, and Monitor. Contractual guarantees that your data isn't used for training and isn't shared with consumer OpenAI services. Global is not the right choice when a specific regulation explicitly requires inference processing to occur within a named country or zone. Note the word "processing" there: not data at rest, but the transient processing of the prompt itself. These cases do exist, particularly in some government, healthcare, and financial sector contexts, and Microsoft Foundry offers Data Zone (US or EU) and Regional SKUs for exactly those situations. But unless someone has pointed you at a specific clause in a specific regulation that names processing locality, you most likely don't need to step down from Global. Summary Microsoft Foundry Global deployments are secure, compliant, and enterprise‑ready. Data at rest remains in your chosen Azure geography. Prompts and completions are not used for training and do not interact with consumer AI services. Encryption, identity, networking, logging, governance, and monitoring are all first‑class Azure controls. Modified Abuse Monitoring is available for qualifying enterprise customers where required. A short summary for each audience: Developers: you can build on Global with confidence, using the Azure patterns you already know. Solution architects: Global is a sensible default unless a regulatory requirement specifically rules it out. Data Zone and Regional remain available for the cases that need them. Security architects: the control surfaces are familiar, the contractual commitments are explicit, and Global can be approved on the same basis as any other Azure PaaS service handling equivalent data classifications. If you've been defaulting to a regional SKU "just to be safe," it's worth taking a fresh look at whether Global actually fits your workload. In most cases, it will.A New Chapter for Realtime AI: Reasoning, Translation, and Real-Time Transcription
Voice can be one of the most direct and productive interfaces for AI — enabling customer support agents that may resolve issues without a single keystroke, live multilingual communication that can take on language barriers as conversations happen, and voice assistants capable of reasoning through complex requests in real time. Developers building these experiences need models that can keep pace with increasingly demanding latency, accuracy, and language coverage requirements. Today, OpenAI’s GPT-realtime-translate, GPT‑realtime‑2 and, GPT-realtime-whisper are rolling out into Microsoft Foundry starting today — together representing a significant step forward for the realtime model lineup available to developers on the platform. GPT-realtime-translate and GPT-realtime-whisper GPT-realtime-translate and GPT-realtime-whisper together extend the realtime stack for live multilingual audio workflows. GPT-realtime-translate is built for continuous, real-time translation, producing translated output as speech unfolds without relying on segmented pipeline processing, while GPT-realtime-whisper provides low-latency streaming transcription of the original audio in parallel. Used together, they help developers support scenarios such as live events, cross-language customer experiences, captions, monitoring, and archival workflows that require both translated output and visibility into the source speech. Continuous stream processing: This new model translates live audio without segmenting or buffering allowing for more natural interactions. New translation and transcription capabilities: Translate between languages in real time and observe faster text to speech. Available via the Realtime API GPT-realtime-2 GPT‑realtime‑2 is a generational upgrade to OpenAI's speech-to-speech model, bringing internal reasoning and an expanded context window to real-time voice applications. Where previous speech to speech models responded immediately, GPT‑realtime‑2 can work through a problem before speaking — making it well suited for voice applications that need to handle complex, multi-step queries entirely in the audio layer without routing to a separate text pipeline. Native reasoning capability: The newest realtime model introduces stronger reasoning capabilities. Now the model thinks internally before responding. Adjustable reasoning effort via {reasoning.effort}: Explicitly request the level of reasoning the model uses -- minimal, low, medium, high – to save on cost and latency. Audio in, audio out: No need for an intermediary text step, conversation stays fluid and natural. Available via the Realtime API This models is coming soon to Microsoft Foundry. Since, May 6, the models have been rolling out into the model catalog. We are excited for you to explore and build with our evolving collection of frontier models. Use cases These models work independently, but they're designed to complement each other in real-world pipelines: Live multilingual events. GPT-realtime-translate enables real-time translation of live audio, producing translated speech along with a transcript in the target language. GPT‑realtime‑whisper can be used in parallel to capture a transcription of the original speech for captions, monitoring, or archival purposes. Together, they enable multilingual live streaming with both translated experiences and visibility into the source language. Global customer support. Route inbound calls through GPT-realtime-translate to translate conversations in real time and provide a translated transcript for agents. Use GPT‑realtime‑whisper alongside it to capture the original conversation as text for compliance, quality review, or analytics. Then pass the interaction to an agent built with GPT‑realtime‑2 using {reasoning.effort}: high for complex issue resolution, all within a continuous audio pipeline. International voice assistants. Build once and deploy across languages. GPT-realtime-translate enables multilingual interaction and provides translated output with a target-language transcript, while GPT‑realtime‑whisper can optionally capture the original user input as text. GPT‑realtime‑2 manages reasoning and conversational context, supporting more complex voice interactions. Pricing Model Deployment Modality Pricing per 1M tokens Input Cached Input Output GPT-realtime-2 Global Standard Audio $32.00 $0.40 $64.00 Text $4.00 $0.40 $24.00 Image $5.00 $0.50 -- GPT-realtime-translate Global Standard Audio -- -- $2.04/hour GPT-realtime-whisper Global Standard Audio -- -- $1.02/hour *Pricing for GPT-realtime-translate and GPT-realtime-whisper will be done by the hour Getting Started Looking for ways to dive in? GPT-realtime-translate, GPT-realtime-whisper, and GPT‑realtime‑2 are rolling out into Microsoft Foundry today. Explore the model catalog and start building: https://ai.azure.com
GPT-5.5-Pro not listed in foundry?
The model is mentioned in this blog post : https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/openais-gpt-5-5-in-microsoft-foundry-frontier-intelligence-on-an-enterprise-ready-platform/ But it is currently not listed on Foundry. Only latest pro model is 5.4-pro. When will 5.5-pro model be available on azure foundry?Now in Foundry: IBM Granite 4.1, NVIDIA Nemotron Nano Omni, and Qwen3.6-35B-A3B
This week Microsoft Foundry adds two major model families alongside a reasoning powerhouse that spans the full spectrum from specialized speech and vision to general-purpose coding and long-context analysis. IBM's Granite 4.1 is a famiily of 10: six LLMs across 3B, 8B, and 30B sizes in both full-precision and FP8 variants, plus a safety model, a vision-language model for document extraction, and a multilingual speech recognition model. NVIDIA's Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning brings multimodal capability—video, audio, image, and text—to a 31B Mamba2-Transformer Hybrid Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) architecture that activates only 3B parameters per forward pass; three variants are available in Foundry (BF16, FP8, and NVFP4), with the FP8 variant featured here. Qwen3.6-35B-A3B is designed for agentic coding among open models, with thinking preservation across conversation turns and a context window extensible to 1 million tokens. Models of the week IBM: granite-4.1-30b Model Specs Parameters / size: 30B (flagship of the Granite 4.1 family) Context length: 131,072 tokens Primary task: Text generation (multilingual instruction following, RAG, tool calling, code, summarization) Why it's interesting The Granite 4.1 release brings 10 models to Microsoft Foundry. The LLM lineup covers granite-4.1-3b-instruct, granite-4.1-8b-instruct, and granite-4.1-30b-instruct with FP8 variants for each, plus granite-guardian-4.1-8b for safety, granite-vision-4.1-4b for document and chart understanding, and granite-speech-4.1-2b for multilingual speech recognition. This is a deployment-ready stack where teams can mix and match model sizes and modalities from a single provider. Strong instruction following and reasoning at the 30B scale: granite-4.1-30b-instruct scores 80.16 on MMLU, 64.09 on MMLU-Pro, 83.74 on Big-Bench Hard (BBH), 77.80 on AGI Eval, 45.76 on GPQA (Graduate-Level Google-Proof Q&A, a graduate-level science reasoning benchmark), and 89.65 average on IFEval (instruction following). These results reflect SFT and reinforcement learning post-training focused specifically on instruction compliance, tool calling accuracy, and long-context retrieval. (View benchmarks here) Enhanced tool calling and 12-language support: Granite 4.1 models are trained for structured function calling and support 12 languages—Arabic, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish—with dialog, extraction, and summarization capabilities. Safety and multimodal coverage within the same family: The inclusion of granite-guardian-4.1-8b (a safety classifier for detecting harmful content and prompt injections), granite-vision-4.1-4b (a Vision Language Model optimized for document extraction from PDFs, charts, and tables), and granite-speech-4.1-2b (a 2B multilingual Automatic Speech Recognition model) means teams can address safety, document parsing, and audio ingestion within the same model family—reducing integration complexity across a full pipeline. Try it Use Case Prompt Pattern Multilingual RAG Submit retrieved document passages in any of 12 supported languages; ask model to synthesize and cite sources Agentic tool calling Provide function definitions + user goal; model plans and executes tool calls in structured format Document extraction (granite-vision-4.1-4b) Submit PDF page image; extract tables, key figures, or form fields as structured JSON Safety classification (granite-guardian-4.1-8b) Pass user input or model output; receive structured risk assessment before serving response Sample prompt for an enterprise document processing deployment: You are building a multilingual document intelligence pipeline for a global financial institution. Using the granite-4.1-30b-instruct endpoint deployed in Microsoft Foundry, submit each incoming policy or regulatory document with the following system instruction: "You are a compliance analysis assistant. Review the document and extract: (1) all regulatory requirements described, (2) the entities to which each requirement applies, (3) any compliance deadlines mentioned, and (4) any penalties or consequences for non-compliance. Return the output as a structured JSON array with one entry per requirement." For documents that include scanned pages, first route them through granite-vision-4.1-4b to extract text and table content before passing to the 30B model for compliance analysis. Pass all user-facing outputs through granite-guardian-4.1-8b to screen for sensitive information before returning results. NVIDIA: Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning-FP8 Model Specs Parameters / size: 31B total, ~3B activated per forward pass (Mamba2-Transformer Hybrid Mixture-of-Experts) Context length: 256,000 tokens Primary task: Video-audio-image-text-to-text (Multimodal understanding, reasoning, tool calling) Why it's interesting Multimodal input from a single efficient endpoint: Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning supports video (up to 2 minutes), audio (up to 1 hour), images (RGB), and text—all from a single model deployed in Microsoft Foundry. Three variants are available in Foundry: full-precision BF16, FP8, and NVFP4. Paper: Nemotron Nano Omni technical report. Strong results across vision, document, video, and audio benchmarks: With reasoning mode enabled, the model scores 82.8 on MathVista-MINI (visual math reasoning), 67.04 on OCRBenchV2-EN (document OCR), 63.6 on Charxiv Reasoning (chart understanding), 72.2 on Video MME (video Q&A), 74.52 on Daily Omni (video+audio omnimodal understanding), and 89.39 on VoiceBench (speech instruction following). On OSWorld (GUI agent benchmark measuring autonomous computer use), it scores 47.4—a notable result for a model at the 3B active parameter scale. (Please see above model cards for further benchmark data) Mamba2-Transformer Hybrid MoE for efficient long-context inference: The model's layers alternate between Mamba2 state-space blocks (which process sequences with linear rather than quadratic cost) and standard Transformer attention blocks, combined with Mixture-of-Experts feedforward layers. Only ~3B parameters are activated per token despite the 31B total, making the 256K context window practically usable at lower compute cost than a comparably sized dense model. Word-level timestamps, JSON output, and tool calling for structured media workflows: The model produces word-level timestamps from audio, enabling precise transcript-to-timecode alignment for review and indexing workflows. Combined with JSON-structured output, chain-of-thought reasoning, and native tool calling, it can serve as an agentic step that ingests raw media (meeting recordings, M&E assets, training videos) and produces structured outputs for downstream systems without requiring separate transcription or OCR preprocessing stages. Try it Use Case Prompt Pattern Meeting intelligence Submit audio recording (up to 1 hr); extract transcript with word-level timestamps, action items, and decisions as structured JSON Video content analysis Submit video clip (up to 2 min) + query; retrieve timestamped summary of key events or spoken content Document + audio joint analysis Submit scanned document image alongside narrated walkthrough audio; extract and reconcile information from both modalities Multimodal tool calling Provide tool definitions + combined image/audio input; model reasons over content and executes structured tool calls Sample prompt for a media and compliance deployment: You are building a broadcast compliance review system for a media company. Using the Nemotron-3-Nano-Omni-30B-A3B-Reasoning-FP8 endpoint deployed in Microsoft Foundry, submit each recorded segment as video input with the following instruction: "Review this video segment and produce a compliance report as a JSON object with the following fields: transcript (full text with word-level timestamps), flagged_segments (array of objects with start_time, end_time, content, and reason for flagging), speaker_count (estimated number of distinct speakers), and compliance_summary (overall assessment). Flag any content that includes unverified factual claims, restricted product categories, or regulatory disclosures that may be incomplete." Use the word-level timestamps from the compliance report to route flagged segments directly to the editorial review queue with precise timecode references. Qwen: Qwen3.6-35B-A3B Model Specs Parameters / size: 35B total, 3B activated (Mixture-of-Experts) Context length: 262,144 tokens natively, extensible to 1,010,000 tokens Primary task: Image-text-to-text (agentic coding, reasoning, vision) Why it's interesting Agentic coding improvements over Qwen3.5-35B-A3B: Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scores 73.4 on SWE-bench Verified (vs. 70.0 for Qwen3.5-35B-A3B and 52.0 for Gemma 4 31B), 67.2 on SWE-bench Multilingual (vs. 60.3 and 51.7), and 49.5 on SWE-bench Pro (vs. 44.6 and 35.7). Terminal-Bench 2.0 reaches 51.5 (vs. 40.5 and 42.9). The update targets frontend workflows and repository-level reasoning specifically, areas where earlier Qwen3.5 iterations showed gaps. Blog post: Qwen3.6-35B-A3B. Hybrid architecture: Gated DeltaNet and Mixture-of-Experts: The model's 40 layers alternate between Gated DeltaNet blocks (a form of linear attention that avoids the quadratic cost of standard self-attention), Gated Attention blocks (using Grouped Query Attention with 16 query heads and 2 key-value heads), and Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) feedforward layers with 256 experts (8 routed + 1 shared active per token). Only 3B parameters are activated per forward pass, keeping inference cost comparable to a 3B dense model while retaining the capacity of a 35B model for knowledge and specialization. Thinking preservation across conversation turns: Qwen3.6 introduces an option to retain reasoning context from previous messages in multi-turn conversations. In prior models, chain-of-thought traces were stripped between turns, requiring the model to re-derive context it had already reasoned through. With thinking preservation enabled, iterative coding workflows—such as debugging across multiple exchanges—benefit from accumulated reasoning without repeating earlier analysis. Natively extensible to 1 million token context: The 262K native context is already among the largest in open models at this size, and the architecture supports extension to 1,010,000 tokens. On GPQA Diamond (science reasoning), Qwen3.6-35B-A3B scores 86.0—above both Gemma 4 31B (84.3) and Qwen3.5-27B (85.5)—while matching Gemma 4 31B on MMLU Pro (85.2) and LiveCodeBench v6 (80.4 vs. 80.0). Try it Use Case Prompt Pattern Repository-level code change Provide repository structure + task description; model plans file edits and outputs unified diff Multi-turn iterative debugging Enable thinking preservation; submit failing test + code across multiple turns; accumulate reasoning context Frontend code generation Provide design spec or screenshot + existing codebase context; generate component implementation Long-document reasoning Submit technical specification (up to 262K tokens); ask model to identify ambiguities or implementation gaps Sample prompt for a software engineering deployment: You are building an automated code review and implementation assistant for a platform engineering team. Using the Qwen3.6-35B-A3B endpoint deployed in Microsoft Foundry, enable thinking preservation for multi-turn sessions. In the first turn, submit the repository file tree and a GitHub issue describing a required API endpoint change. Prompt the model: "Review the repository structure and describe your implementation plan, including which files need to change and why." In the second turn, submit the relevant source files and prompt: "Based on your earlier plan, implement the changes and produce a unified diff." In the third turn, submit the test suite and prompt: "Write additional unit tests for the new endpoint, covering edge cases identified in your reasoning." The thinking preservation feature ensures the model carries forward its understanding of the codebase across all three turns without re-explaining context. Getting started You can deploy open-source Hugging Face models directly in Microsoft Foundry by browsing the Hugging Face collection in the Foundry model catalog and deploying to managed endpoints in just a few clicks. You can also start from the Hugging Face Hub. First, select any supported model and then choose "Deploy on Microsoft Foundry", which brings you straight into Azure with secure, scalable inference already configured. Learn how to discover models and deploy them using Microsoft Foundry documentation. Follow along the Model Mondays series and access the GitHub to stay up to date on the latest Read Hugging Face on Azure docs Learn about one-click deployments from the Hugging Face Hub on Microsoft Foundry Explore models in Microsoft FoundryIntroducing OpenAI's newest chat model in Microsoft Foundry
OpenAI's GPT-5.5 Instant (or Chat-latest in the API) begins rolling out in Microsoft Foundry today as GPT-chat-latest. Built on GPT-5.4 and GPT-5.3-chat, the new model delivers measurable gains in factual accuracy, tool calling, and response efficiency. These improvements translate directly into more reliable production deployments. GPT-chat-latest is designed for the workflows builders are actually shipping: multi-turn assistants, agentic systems that orchestrate tools, and retrieval-grounded applications where precision and grounding matter as much as conversational quality. Why the name is changing In Microsoft Foundry, we are introducing GPT-chat-latest as the product name for this release, while the model continues to follow the existing Preview lifecycle and standard notice periods. We are also evaluating ways to simplify how customers access continuously updated models over time, but current behavior remains unchanged as that work continue Smarter, more factually reliable GPT-chat-latest closes the factuality gap from prior iterations with significant reductions in hallucinations, especially in domains where accuracy matters most. According to OpenAI, the new model produces 52.5% fewer hallucinations and reduces hallucinated claims by 37.3% on conversations previously flagged for factual errors when compared to GPT-5.3-chat. These gains extend beyond text. GPT-chat-latest shows improvements in visual reasoning, expert multimodal understanding, and STEM tasks, with measurable lifts across standard benchmarks: Benchmark GPT-5.3-chat GPT-chat-latest CharXiv-reasoning Scientific Chart Reasoning 75.0 81.6 MMMU-Pro Expert multimodal reasoning 69.2 76.0 GPQA PhD-level science questions 78.5 85.6 AIME 2025 Competition math 65.4 81.2 *Data shown comes from OpenAI’s testing” For builders shipping into regulated workloads such as clinical decision support, legal research, financial advisory, and technical analysis, these improvements raise the bar on the kinds of applications GPT-chat-latest can assist with. More efficient outputs GPT-chat-latest produces responses that may be more to-the-point without losing substance. The model may reduce verbosity and over formatting, ask fewer follow-up questions, and avoid cluttered output patterns that often require post-processing in production UIs. For builders, this can translate to two concrete benefits: lower output token costs at scale, and cleaner responses that drop into product surfaces with less downstream cleanup. In comparative testing from OpenAI, GPT-chat-latest produced roughly 25–30% fewer words than GPT-5.3-chat across a range of common prompts while preserving response quality, and in many cases improving it. Improving intelligence and tool calling GPT-chat-latest introduces measurable improvements in how the model interacts with tools, including better judgment about when and how to invoke them. The model produces more structured and context-aware tool invocation outputs, which is particularly relevant for workflows that rely on function calling, retrieval-augmented generation, and multi-step reasoning. Equally important, the model is better at deciding whether a tool is needed in the first place, reducing unnecessary tool calls in scenarios where it already has the information to answer directly. Improved search and context handling GPT-chat-latest includes targeted improvements to how the model retrieves, interprets, and synthesizes information when search is involved, with enhancements to query formulation, result ranking, and filtering, plus more grounded synthesis of retrieved content into final responses. These changes improve handling of ambiguous or underspecified queries and reduce noise in answers that depend on retrieved content. The model also makes better use of the context developers pass in, including system prompts, conversation history, retrieved documents, and structured data. Applications that maintain long-running state or stitch together multiple retrieval steps produce more coherent, context-aware outputs without developers having to over-engineer prompt scaffolding. Use Cases: When to choose the chat model Developers typically choose a chat-optimized model like GPT-5.5-chat when the application needs to sustain multi-turn conversations while reliably following instructions and coordinating external tools. This is a fit for assistants and agentic workflows where the model must interpret user intent over time, decide when to retrieve additional context, and produce structured outputs for downstream systems rather than just generate free-form text. Customer support and contact centers: virtual agents that maintain conversational context across a case, retrieve policy or product documentation via search, and hand off to a ticketing or CRM system through tool calls when escalation is needed. Retail and e-commerce: shopping and service assistants that clarify preferences over multiple turns, reference catalogs and policies via retrieval, and generate structured actions such as returns, exchanges, and order lookups through integrated tools. Manufacturing and field service: technician-facing assistants that combine conversational guidance with retrieval of manuals and work instructions, plus structured task creation in maintenance systems. Use GPT-chat-latest Use GPT-5.5 Reasoning Multi-turn assistants and customer-facing chat experiences Harder problems that benefit from more deliberate, step-by-step thinking Agentic workflows that coordinate tools (search, retrieval, ticketing, CRM) and benefit from structured tool outputs Complex analysis, planning, or decision support where correctness matters more than conversational flow Interactive experiences where you want quick back-and-forth clarification and task completion Tasks involving multi-constraint reasoning (policy interpretation, detailed requirements, long-horizon plans) RAG-based apps where the model must decide when to retrieve and then synthesize grounded answers Offline or low-tool scenarios where the main value is deeper reasoning over provided context Pricing Model Input ($/1M tokens) Cached input ($/1M tokens) Output ($/1M tokens) GPT-chat-latest $5 $0.50 $30 Responsible AI in Microsoft Foundry At Microsoft, our mission to empower people and organizations remains constant. In the age of AI, trust is foundational to adoption, and earning that trust requires a commitment to transparency, safety, and accountability. Microsoft Foundry provides governance controls, monitoring, and evaluation capabilities to help organizations deploy models responsibly in production environments, aligned with Microsoft's Responsible AI principles. Getting started GPT-chat-latest is rolling out in Microsoft Foundry today.Introducing OpenAI's GPT-image-2 in Microsoft Foundry
Take a small design team running a global social campaign. They have the creative vision to produce localized imagery for every market, but not the resources to reshoot, reformat, or outsource that scale. Every asset needs to fit a different platform, a different dimension, a different cultural context, and they all need to ship at the same time. This is where flexible image generation comes in handy. OpenAI's GPT-image-2 is now generally available and rolling out today to Microsoft Foundry, introducing a step change in image generation. Developers and designers now get more control over image output, so a small team can execute with the reach and flexibility of a much larger one. What is new in GPT-image-2? GPT-image-2 brings real world intelligence, multilingual understanding, improved instruction following, increased resolution support, and an intelligent routing layer giving developers the tools to scale image generation for production workflows. Real world intelligence GPT-image-2 has a knowledge cut off of December 2025, meaning that it is able to give you more contextually relevant and accurate outputs. The model also comes with enhanced thinking capabilities that allow it to search the web, check its own outputs, and create multiple images from just one prompt. These enhancements shift image generation models away from being simple tools and runs them into creative sidekicks. Multilingual understanding GPT-image-2 includes increased language support across Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hindi, and Bengali, as well as new thinking capabilities. This means the model can create images and render text that feels localized. Increased resolution support GPT-image-2 introduces 4K resolution support, giving developers the ability to generate rich, detailed, and photorealistic images at custom dimensions. Resolution guidelines to keep in mind: Constraint Detail Total pixel budget Maximum pixels in final image cannot exceed 8,294,400 Minimum pixels in final image cannot be less than 655,360 Requests exceeding this are automatically resized to fit. Resolutions 4K, 1024x1024, 1536x1024, and 1024x1536 Dimension alignment Each dimension must be a multiple of 16 Note: If your requested resolution exceeds the pixel budget, the service will automatically resize it down. Intelligent routing layer GPT-image-2 also includes an expanded routing layer with two distinct modes, allowing the service to intelligently select the right generation configuration for a request without requiring an explicitly set size value. Mode 1 — Legacy size selection In Mode 1, the routing layer selects one of the three legacy size tiers to use for generation: Size tier Description smimage Small image output image Standard image output xlimage Large image output This mode is useful for teams already familiar with the legacy size tiers who want to benefit from automatic selection without making any manual changes. Mode 2 — Token size bucket selection In Mode 2, the routing layer selects from six token size buckets — 16, 24, 36, 48, 64, 96 — which map roughly to the legacy size tiers: Token bucket Approximate legacy size 16, 24 smimage 36, 48 image 64, 96 xlimage This approach can allow for more flexibility in the number of tokens generated, which in turn helps to better optimize output quality and efficiency for a given prompt. See it in action GPT-image-2 shows improved image fidelity across visual styles, generating more detailed and refined images. But, don’t just take our word for it, let's see the model in action with a few prompts and edits. Here is the example we used: Prompt: Interior of an empty subway car (no people). Wide-angle view looking down the aisle. Clean, modern subway car with seats, poles, route map strip, and ad frames above the windows. Realistic lighting with a slight cool fluorescent tone, realistic materials (metal poles, vinyl seats, textured floor). As you can see, when using the same base prompt, the image quality and realism improved with each model. Now let’s take a look at adding incremental changes to the same image: Prompt: Populate the ad frames with a cohesive ad campaign for “Zava Flower Delivery” and use an array of flower types. And our subway is now full of ads for the new ZAVA flower delivery service. Let's ask for another small change: Prompt: In all Zava Flower Delivery advertisements, change the flowers shown to roses (red and pink roses). And in three simple prompts, we've created a mockup of a flower delivery ad. From marketing material to website creation to UX design, GPT-image-2 now allows developers to deliver production-grade assets for real business use cases. Image generation across industries These new capabilities open the door to richer, more production-ready image generation workflows across a range of enterprise scenarios: Retail & e-commerce: Generate product imagery at exact platform-required dimensions, from square thumbnails to wide banners, without post-processing. Marketing: Produce crisp, rich in color campaign visuals and social assets localized to different markets. Media & entertainment: Generate storyboard panels and scene at resolutions suited to production pipelines. Education & training: Create visual learning aids and course materials formatted to exact display requirements across devices. UI/UX design: Accelerate mockup and prototype workflows by generating interface assets at the precise dimensions your design system requires. Trust and safety At Microsoft, our mission to empower people and organizations remains constant. As part of this commitment, models made available through Foundry undergo internal reviews and are deployed with safeguards designed to support responsible use at scale. Learn more about responsible AI at Microsoft. For GPT-image-2, Microsoft applied an in-depth safety approach that addresses disallowed content and misuse while maintaining human oversight. The deployment combines OpenAI’s image generation safety mitigations with Azure AI Content Safety, including filters and classifiers for sensitive content. Pricing Model Offer type Pricing - Image Pricing - Text GPT-image-2 Standard Global Input Tokens: $8 Cached Input Tokens: $2 Output Tokens: $30 Input Tokens: $5 Cached Input Tokens: $1.25 Note: All prices are per 1M token. There is no billing for output tokens for the GPT-image-2 model. Getting started Whether you’re building a personalized retail experience, automating visual content pipelines or accelerating design workflows. GPT-image-2 gives your team the resolution control and intelligent routing to generate images that fit your exact needs. Try the GPT-image-2 in Microsoft Foundry today! Deploy the model in Microsoft Foundry Experiment with the model in the Image playground Read the documentation to learn more
Automate Prior Authorization with AI Agents - Now Available as a Foundry Template
By Amit Mukherjee · Principal Solutions Engineer, Microsoft Health & Life Sciences Lindsey Craft-Goins · Technology Leader - Cloud & AI Platforms, Health & Life Sciences Joel Borellis · Director Solutions Engineering - Cloud & AI Platforms, Health & Life Sciences Prior authorization (PA) is one of the most expensive bottlenecks in U.S. healthcare. Physicians complete an average of 39 PA requests per week, spending roughly 13 hours of physician-and-staff time on PA-related work (AMA 2024 Prior Authorization Physician Survey). Turnaround averages 5–14 business days, and PA alone accounts for an estimated $35 billion in annual administrative spending (Sahni et al., Health Affairs Scholar, 2024). The regulatory clock is now ticking. CMS-0057-F mandates electronic PA with 72-hour urgent response starting in 2026. Forty-nine states plus DC already have PA laws on the books, and at least half of all U.S. state legislatures introduced new PA reform bills this year, including laws specifically targeting AI use in PA decisions (KFF Health News, April 2026). Today we’re making the Prior Authorization Multi-Agent Solution Accelerator available as a Microsoft Foundry template. Health plan payers can deploy a working, four-agent PA review pipeline to Azure using the Azure Developer CLI (“azd”) with a single command in supported environments, then customize it to their policies, workflows, and EHR environment. Try it now: Find the template in the Foundry template gallery, or clone directly from github.com/microsoft/Prior-Authorization-Multi-Agent-Solution-Accelerator What the template delivers The accelerator deploys four specialist Foundry hosted agents (Compliance, Clinical Reviewer, Coverage, and Synthesis), each independently containerized and managed by Foundry. In internal testing with synthetic demo cases, the pipeline reduced review workflow, from beginning to completion in under 5 minutes per case. Agent Role Key capability Compliance Documentation check 10-item checklist with blocking/non-blocking flags Clinical Reviewer Clinical evidence ICD-10 validation, PubMed + ClinicalTrials.gov search Coverage Policy matching CMS NCD/LCD lookup, per-criterion MET/NOT_MET mapping Synthesis Decision rubric 3-gate APPROVE/PEND with weighted confidence scoring Compliance and Clinical run in parallel. Coverage runs after clinical findings are ready. Synthesis evaluates all three outputs through a three-gate rubric. The result is a structured recommendation with per-criterion confidence scores and a full audit trail, not a black-box answer. Solution architecture The accelerator runs entirely on Azure. The frontend and backend deploy as Azure Container Apps. The four specialist agents are hosted by Microsoft Foundry. Real-time healthcare data flows through third-party MCP servers. Figure 1: Azure solution architecture How the pipeline works The four agents execute in a structured parallel-then-sequential pipeline. Compliance and Clinical run simultaneously in Phase 1. Coverage runs after clinical findings are ready. The Synthesis agent applies a three-gate decision rubric over all prior outputs. Figure 2: Agentic architecture, hosted agent pipeline Compliance and Clinical run in parallel via asyncio.gather, since neither depends on the other. Coverage runs sequentially after Clinical because it needs the structured clinical profile for criterion mapping. Synthesis evaluates all three outputs through a three-gate rubric (Provider, Codes, Medical Necessity) with weighted confidence scoring: 40% coverage criteria + 30% clinical extraction + 20% compliance + 10% policy match. The total pipeline time is bound by the slowest parallel agent plus the sequential agents, not the sum. In internal testing with synthetic demo cases, this architecture indicated materially reduced processing time compared to sequential manual workflows. Under the hood For the architect in the room, here are four design decisions worth knowing about: Foundry hosted agents: Each agent is independently containerized, versioned, and managed by Foundry’s runtime. The FastAPI backend is a pure HTTP dispatcher. All reasoning happens inside the agent containers, and there are no code changes between local (Docker Compose) and production (Foundry); the environment variable is the only switch. Structured output: Every agent uses MAF’s response_format enforcement to produce typed Pydantic schemas at the token level. No JSON parsing, no malformed fences, no free-form text. The orchestrator receives typed Python objects; the frontend receives a stable API contract. Keyless security: DefaultAzureCredential throughout, so no API keys are stored anywhere. Managed Identity handles production; azd tokens handle local development. Role assignments are provisioned automatically by Bicep at deploy time. Observability: All agents emit OpenTelemetry traces to Azure Application Insights. The Foundry portal shows per-agent spans correlated by case ID. End-to-end latency, per-agent contribution, and error rates are visible from day one with no additional configuration. For the full architecture documentation, agent specifications, Pydantic schemas, and extension guides, see the GitHub repository. Why this matters now Human-in-the-loop by design The system runs in LENIENT mode by default: it produces only APPROVE or PEND and is not designed to produce automated DENY outcomes in its default configuration. Every recommendation requires a clinician to Accept or Override with documented rationale before the decision is finalized. Override records flow to the audit PDF, notification letters, and downstream systems. This directly addresses the emerging wave of state legislation governing AI use in PA decisions. Domain experts own the rules Agent behavior is defined in markdown skill files, not Python code. When CMS updates a coverage determination or a plan changes its commercial policy, a clinician or compliance officer edits a text file and redeploys. No engineering PR required. Real-time healthcare data via MCP Agents connect to five MCP servers for real-time data: ICD-10 codes, NPI Registry, CMS Coverage policies, PubMed, and ClinicalTrials.gov. This incorporates real‑time clinical reference data sources to inform agent recommendations. Third-party MCP servers are included for demonstration with synthetic data only. Their inclusion does not constitute an endorsement by Microsoft. See the GitHub repository for production migration guidance. Audit-ready from day one Every case generates an 8-section audit justification PDF with per-criterion evidence, data source attribution, timestamps, and confidence breakdowns. Clinician overrides are recorded in Section 9. Notification letters (approval and pend) are generated automatically. These artifacts are designed to support CMS-0057-F documentation requirements. Deploy in under 15 minutes From the Foundry template gallery or from the command line: git clone https://github.com/microsoft/Prior-Authorization-Multi-Agent-Solution-Accelerator cd Prior-Authorization-Multi-Agent-Solution-Accelerator azd up That single command provisions Foundry, Azure Container Registry, Container Apps, builds all Docker images, registers the four agents, and runs health checks. The demo is live with a synthetic sample case as soon as deployment completes. What’s included What you customize 4 Foundry hosted agents Payer-specific coverage policies FastAPI orchestrator + Next.js frontend EHR/FHIR integration for clinical notes 5 MCP healthcare data connections Self-hosted MCP servers for production PHI Audit PDF + notification letter generation Authentication (Microsoft Entra ID) Full Bicep infrastructure-as-code Persistent storage (Cosmos DB / PostgreSQL) OpenTelemetry + App Insights observability Additional agents (Pharmacy, Financial) Built on Microsoft Foundry + Foundry hosted agents · Microsoft Agent Framework (MAF) · Azure OpenAI gpt-5.4 · Azure Container Apps · Azure Developer CLI + Bicep · OpenTelemetry + Azure Application Insights · DefaultAzureCredential (keyless, no secrets) Full architecture documentation, agent specifications, and extension guides are in the GitHub repository. Get started Foundry template gallery: Search “AI-Powered Prior Authorization for Healthcare” in the Foundry template section GitHub: github.com/microsoft/Prior-Authorization-Multi-Agent-Solution-Accelerator Disclaimers Not a medical device. This solution accelerator is not a medical device, is not FDA-cleared, and is not intended for autonomous clinical decision-making. All AI recommendations require qualified clinical review before any authorization decision is finalized. Not production-ready software. This is an open-source reference architecture (MIT License), not a supported Microsoft product. Customers are solely responsible for testing, validation, regulatory compliance, security hardening, and production deployment. Performance figures are illustrative. Metrics cited (including processing time reductions) are based on internal testing with synthetic demo data. Actual results will vary based on case complexity, infrastructure, and configuration. Third-party services included for demonstration only; not endorsed by Microsoft. Customers should evaluate providers against their compliance and data residency requirements. The demo uses synthetic data only. Customers deploying real patient data are responsible for HIPAA compliance and establishing appropriate Business Associate Agreements. This accelerator is intended to help customers align documentation workflows with CMS‑0057‑F requirements but has not been independently validated or certified for regulatory compliance.
Vector Drift in Azure AI Search: Three Hidden Reasons Your RAG Accuracy Degrades After Deployment
What Is Vector Drift? Vector drift occurs when embeddings stored in a vector index no longer accurately represent the semantic intent of incoming queries. Because vector similarity search depends on relative semantic positioning, even small changes in models, data distribution, or preprocessing logic can significantly affect retrieval quality over time. Unlike schema drift or data corruption, vector drift is subtle: The system continues to function Queries return results But relevance steadily declines Cause 1: Embedding Model Version Mismatch What Happens Documents are indexed using one embedding model, while query embeddings are generated using another. This typically happens due to: Model upgrades Shared Azure OpenAI resources across teams Inconsistent configuration between environments Why This Matters Embeddings generated by different models: Exist in different vector spaces Are not mathematically comparable Produce misleading similarity scores As a result, documents that were previously relevant may no longer rank correctly. Recommended Practice A single vector index should be bound to one embedding model and one dimension size for its entire lifecycle. If the embedding model changes, the index must be fully re-embedded and rebuilt. Cause 2: Incremental Content Updates Without Re-Embedding What Happens New documents are continuously added to the index, while existing embeddings remain unchanged. Over time, new content introduces: Updated terminology Policy changes New product or domain concepts Because semantic meaning is relative, the vector space shifts—but older vectors do not. Observable Impact Recently indexed documents dominate retrieval results Older but still valid content becomes harder to retrieve Recall degrades without obvious system errors Practical Guidance Treat embeddings as living assets, not static artifacts: Schedule periodic re-embedding for stable corpora Re-embed high-impact or frequently accessed documents Trigger re-embedding when domain vocabulary changes meaningfully Declining similarity scores or reduced citation coverage are often early signals of drift. Cause 3: Inconsistent Chunking Strategies What Happens Chunk size, overlap, or parsing logic is adjusted over time, but previously indexed content is not updated. The index ends up containing chunks created using different strategies. Why This Causes Drift Different chunking strategies produce: Different semantic density Different contextual boundaries Different retrieval behavior This inconsistency reduces ranking stability and makes retrieval outcomes unpredictable. Governance Recommendation Chunking strategy should be treated as part of the index contract: Use one chunking strategy per index Store chunk metadata (for example, chunk_version) Rebuild the index when chunking logic changes Design Principles Versioned embedding deployments Scheduled or event-driven re-embedding pipelines Standardized chunking strategy Retrieval quality observability Prompt and response evaluation Key Takeaways Vector drift is an architectural concern, not a service defect It emerges from model changes, evolving data, and preprocessing inconsistencies Long-lived RAG systems require embedding lifecycle management Azure AI Search provides the controls needed to mitigate drift effectively Conclusion Vector drift is an expected characteristic of production RAG systems. Teams that proactively manage embedding models, chunking strategies, and retrieval observability can maintain reliable relevance as their data and usage evolve. Recognizing and addressing vector drift is essential to building and operating robust AI solutions on Azure. Further Reading The following Microsoft resources provide additional guidance on vector search, embeddings, and production-grade RAG architectures on Azure. Azure AI Search – Vector Search Overview - https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/search/vector-search-overview Azure OpenAI – Embeddings Concepts - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-foundry/openai/how-to/embeddings?view=foundry-classic&tabs=csharp Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) Pattern on Azure - https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/retrieval-augmented-generation-overview?tabs=videos Azure Monitor – Observability Overview - https://learn.microsoft.com/azure/azure-monitor/overview
