In the wake of the world’s most famous AI writer, ChatGPT arrives at the Bing search engineMicrosoft has now unveiled its plans to use the same technology to improve workplace productivity, with the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Second pilot (opens in new tab) is powered by the same kind of prompt-based AI that powers ChatGPT – meaning Microsoft 365 can write entire emails and reports for you with a written instruction of less than a sentence.
The announcements were made during a virtual press conference hosted via LinkedIn on March 16 by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and its Corporate Vice President Jared Spataro, on the same day BingoTingo Pro reported that the company relied heavily on GPT-4, the latest version of OpenAI’s language model.
Contents
GPT-4 in the workplace
After being excited about technological advancements in computers that have made people’s lives easier, such as video conferencing And Collaboration tools, Nadella noted that for the first time in history, AI is at the center of a product, rather than driving it behind the scenes. In light of this, he also called for responsible use.
However, he also said that the nature of work would change to make our lives even easier.
Spataro then took over to present a segment about the need for these changes and to “rediscover the soul of work”. He then introduced the new tool, explaining that it works by combining large language models (LLMs), individual data, and Microsoft 365 apps that people use every day.
He also claimed that because the productivity tool built on the principles of security, compliance, privacy and responsible AI, it is safe and suitable for enterprise use.
He admitted that sometimes Copilot didn’t get things right, yet was “helpfully wrong,” which still gave users a head start on their task. That’s a little crazy, but you can’t argue with him.
GPT-4 as a time saver
Another section presented by Sumit Chauhan, the company’s Corporate Vice President, showed how Copilot allows users to add their own details to the copy, or even ask Copilot to make it more concise.
In addition, OneDrive can also draw from OneDrive photo albums to automatically choose photos to import.
Copilot can also save users time and “unleash creativity at work”, provide content drafts in the style of previous documents, and draw intelligently from existing OneNote documents so it doesn’t work from scratch, potentially requiring less user input. can be made more visual, and vice versa.
However, Chauhan cautioned that human reviews are still required before, say, sending output to customers, but still pointed out the time-saving opportunities.
In addition, Copilot can analyze Excel spreadsheets for trends, summarize them into brief breakdowns, and push for more information. It can even generate graphs from information in an instant.
When it comes to email, Copilot can flag important messages, summarize threads, and even generate replies that Copilot itself can succinctly or restyle.
Copilot allows users to follow meetings without actually being present by instructing Copilot to take notes in their absence. This includes details about who said what, and recognizing why decisions were made, and so on. All this can also be done during a meeting.
Copilot can also extract data from, for example, a sales collateral document and provide it during a meeting with a customer. It also works with Power Automate to create automatic workflows that are triggered when something specific happens in a document or spreadsheet.
Business chat
Akosua Boadi-Agyemang, Senior Marketing Manager for Microsoft, then discussed Business Chat – essentially a version of ChatGPT that works with meeting notes, Teams chats and documents to provide a shared pool of knowledge to get you the information you need in seconds you need , instead of hours.
Like the individual app integrations, Business Chat allows users to manually update generated content (such as SWOT analysis) to make it more accurate, or ask Business Chat to add new generations to the content, should Copilot missing something.
The Copilot System
All of this is powered by the Copilot system – an advanced processing engine that powers everything within Microsoft 365 Copilot – and is “all accessible through natural language”.
A process called “grounding” modifies a prompt after it’s written and before sending it to the LLM, making the process of prompt engineering even easier.
Copilot is being monitored in real-time by experts as Microsoft expressed security concerns and wanted to prevent jailbreaks, which use the software in unintended and perhaps nefarious ways.
The tech giant was quick to point out that its LLMs and The Copilot System aren’t foolproof, but it still has ways and means to protect users and their data, and that the Copilot software will continue to be refined.
The implications of Microsoft 365 Copilot
Until now, OpenAI’s GPT language models have mostly been good at threatening users, generating pasta recipes, or – more seriously – helping with transcription.
As several people proclaimed in the event chat afterwards, it’s not so much that Microsoft 365 Copilot is a “game changer,” but that Microsoft made a compelling case that artificial intelligence is finally ready to address meaningful use cases at scale. to take.
Details on Copilot’s availability have been sparse, but it appears that, at least at launch, it will only be available to businesses.