You're overrating the influence of the name Microsoft here. It's just some devs from the company working on this with no proper guarantee backing the project.
I've been through this whole song and dance already with Microsoft's Guidance (another LLM project) and could not justify using it further in production at work. We built some tools and wrappers ourselves and it wasn't even that difficult. These libraries are often more trouble than they're worth.
Not really, better to leave the AI stuff to the AI people rather than PL people. When you don't, you get gimmick libraries like this rather than a solution that fits into the ecosystem
These folks have no pedigree when it comes to LLMs or AI, so no it does not lend credibility
I've been through this whole song and dance already with Microsoft's Guidance (another LLM project) and could not justify using it further in production at work. We built some tools and wrappers ourselves and it wasn't even that difficult. These libraries are often more trouble than they're worth.