by In the wake of the arrival of the world’s most famous AI author, ChatGPT the Bing search engineMicrosoft has now revealed plans to use the same technology to improve productivity in the workplace, with the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Copilot (opens in new tab) it’s powered by the same kind of prompt-based AI that drives ChatGPT – meaning that, with less than a sentence of written instruction, Microsoft 365 can write entire emails and reports for you.
The announcements were made at a virtual press conference hosted on March 16 via LinkedIn by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and corporate vice president Jared Spataro, the same day TechRadar Pro mentionted that the company was leaning heavily on GPT-4, the latest version of OpenAI’s language model.
GPT-4 at work
After being excited about technological advances in computers that have made human lives easier, such as video conference and collaboration tools, Nadella noted that, for the first time, AI is now at the heart of a product, rather than just powering it behind the scenes. In light of this, he also called for its responsible use.
However, he also said that the nature of work was going to change, to make our lives even easier.
Spataro then took it upon himself to present a segment on 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 linguistic models (LLM), people data and Microsoft 365 applications that people use every day.
He also argued that because the productivity tool based on the principles of security, compliance, privacy and responsible artificial intelligence, it is secure and suitable for enterprise use.
He admitted that sometimes Copilot didn’t get things right, but it would still be “very useful” – giving users a head start on their work. That’s a spin, but you can’t argue with it.
GPT-4 as a time saver
Another session presented by Sumit Chauhan, the company’s Corporate Vice President, showed how Copilot allows users to add their own touches to copy or even ask Copilot to make it more concise.
In addition, OneDrive can also draw from OneDrive photo albums to select photos for automatic import.
Copilot can also save users time and “unleash creativity at work” by previewing content drafts in the style of previous documents, and intelligently pulls from existing OneNote documents so it works from scratch, potentially requiring less user input Language generations can be made more visual and vice versa.
However, Chauhan cautioned that human reviews are still required before, say, sending results to clients, but noted the time-saving potential.
In addition, Copilot can analyze Excel spreadsheets for trends, condense them into short analyses, and tap for more information. It can even create graphs from information in an instant.
When it comes to email, Copilot can highlight important messages, summarize topics, and even generate replies that can be made more concise or styled differently than Copilot itself.
Copilot will allow users to attend meetings without actually being present by instructing Copilot to take notes in their absence. This includes detailing who said what and identifying why decisions were made, etc. All this can also be done during a meeting.
Copilot can also take data from, for example, a sales material document and provide it during a meeting with a customer. It also works with Power Automate to create automatic workflows that engage when something specific happens in a document or spreadsheet.
Professional chat
Akosua Boadi-Agyemang, Senior Director of Marketing for Microsoft, then discussed Business Chat – essentially a version of ChatGPT that works on meeting notes, group chats and documents to provide a shared pool of knowledge to give you the information you need in seconds instead of hours.
Like individual app integrations, Business Chat allows users to update generated content (such as SWOT analysis) manually to make it more accurate, or ask Business Chat to add new generations to the content if the Copilot misses anything.
The Copilot system
All of this is made possible by the Copilot system—a sophisticated processing engine that powers everything inside Microsoft 365 Copilot—and is “all accessible through natural language.”
A process called “grounding” will modify a prompt after it is written and before it is sent to the LLM – making the process of “engineering a prompt” even easier.
Copilot is being monitored in real-time by experts, as Microsoft noted their security concerns and desire to prevent jailbreaks, where the software is used in an unintended and perhaps indecent way.
The tech giant was quick to point out that LLM and its The Copilot System aren’t foolproof, but that despite that, it has ways and means to protect users and their data, and the Copilot software will continue to improve.
Implications of Microsoft 365 Copilot
So far, OpenAI’s GPT language models have mostly been good at threatening users, creating pasta recipes, or – more seriously – helping with transcription.
As several people proclaimed afterward in the event chat, it’s not so much that Microsoft 365 Copilot is a “game changer,” it’s just that Microsoft has made a compelling case that AI is finally ready to take on important use cases at scale.
Details on Copilot’s availability have been scarce, but it appears that, at least at launch, it will only be available for businesses.
