Microsoft touts AI Dev Gallery for Windows

Microsoft is championing its AI Dev Gallery, now available as an open source app intended to help Windows developers integrate AI capabilities within their own projects and apps.

Initially announced as a project in December 2024, AI Dev Gallery was highlighted on April 22 as a mechanism to simplify AI development with.NET through samples, easy model downloads, and exportable source code. It is downloadable from the Microsoft Store, which lists it as a preview.

Serving as a playground for AI development using.NET, AI Dev Gallery allows developers to experiment with and implement AI capabilities in applications without needing a connection to cloud services. Included in AI Dev Gallery are dozens of interactive samples including retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), combining search with generative AI, chat interfaces, object detection, text-to-speech/speech-to-text conversion, and document summarization and analysis. Samples run on the developer’s local machine.

A key feature of AI Dev Gallery is the ability to view the C# source code behind each sample and export it as a standalone Visual Studio project with a single click, Microsoft said. To find and set up AI models, AI Dev Gallery allows developers to browse models from repositories such as Hugging Face and GitHub and download models via a single click. The gallery handles model compatibility, ensuring users get versions that work with the.NET ecosystem.