Microsoft is infusing Outlook, PowerPoint, Word, and its other business apps with an AI assistant powered by ChatGPT technology.
Today, the company unveiled Microsoft 365 Copilot, a tool that can help automate work in the apps to improve productivity.
- Microsoft
365, its workplace and productivity software, will soon feature a
Copilot text box in its apps, where users can prompt the AI to perform
tasks such as writing an email.
- To deliver responses, the system accesses user data, like past emails and documents, across Microsoft 365 accounts.
- To increase the relevancy of its outputs, Copilot's large language model can be trained on data from individual businesses.
- In a presentation, Copilot was able to write an email in Microsoft Outlook to invite friends to a graduation party.
- In PowerPoint, it auto-generated a presentation about a graduating student using photos from their OneDrive account.
- Another
demo showed Copilot creating a business proposal in Microsoft Word and
adding a summary and FAQ element to the document. It then used that
proposal in Word to create a PowerPoint presentation.
- In
Microsoft Teams, Copilot can create a transcript and summarize meetings
that a user can't attend. Users can also converse with the bot to ask
follow-up questions about the meeting.
- Copilot in Excel can automatically create charts and analyze sales data.
What's next:
- Microsoft
said 20 of its enterprise customers are now testing Copilot, though it
plans to make it available to more users "in the coming months."
- It
hasn't specified if the AI capabilities will cost extra in Microsoft
365, which includes the programs formerly branded as Microsoft Office,
along with OneDrive, Teams, and more.
- Microsoft still cautioned that Copilot is best to use for "first drafts" and "starting points."
- "Sometimes,
Copilot will get it right," said Microsoft VP of Modern Work and
Business Applications Jared Spataro said. "Other times, it will be
usefully wrong, giving you an idea that's not perfect but still gives
you a head start."
