01 What happened
Microsoft Foundry introduced several updates to its platform in October 2026. The Microsoft Copilot harness enters public preview, providing a managed loop and sandbox for prompt agents, though existing agents cannot switch to it. GPT-6.1 Terra and the Decisions API reached general availability, while MAI Image 2.6 is now in preview across six regions.
02 Key details
- Microsoft Copilot harness in Foundry Agent Service enters public preview, offering a managed loop and sandbox for agents to read files, run code, and use tools. Existing agents cannot switch to the harness.
- GPT-6.1 Terra (text and image input, up to 1M input tokens) and the Decisions API (predicate, choice, score) reach general availability with regional limits; Decisions API currently excludes East US 2.
- MAI Image 2.6 is in preview in six regions (East US, West Central US, West US, Sweden Central, West Europe, South India), improving text rendering, portraits, 3D imagery, and photorealistic outputs.
- New MAI voice models launch: MAI-Transcribe-2-Streaming ($0.54/audio hour through 2026), MAI-Voice-2.1 ($22/1M characters), and MAI-Voice-2.1-Flash ($15/1M characters), supporting cross-language switching.
03 Why it matters
These updates expand Foundry's capabilities for building and deploying AI agents, from visual reasoning with GPT-6.1 Terra to typed decision-making via the Decisions API. Developers must account for preview status, regional restrictions, and breaking SDK changes before upgrading.
04 Who it matters to
AI agent developers and IT architects.
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