Select Microsoft Users To Get Peek Into AI 'game Changer' For Office Work

Drafting elaborate plans, fetching the best images for your PowerPoint presentation, or summarising meetings — all of this will soon become possible with just a simple prompt, thanks to artificial intelligence (AI).

Microsoft on Tuesday opened up its invitation-only, paid AI programme, Copilot, to 600 customers globally who can now integrate OpenAI’s image generator tool DALL-E into PowerPoint to create custom images supporting their content, among other features.

A new Semantic Index feature is also being rolled out that creates an intuitive map of both user and company data. Microsoft says that by asking Copilot about a “March sales report,” the tool will recognise that “sales reports are produced by Kelly on the finance team and created in Excel,” rather than simply looking for any documents containing those keywords.

The Redmond, Washington-based company said it had received an “overwhelming feedback” from the earliest 20 customers using Copilot. “They point to how it is a game changer for meetings and is beginning to transform the way they create. And, they have identified areas where we can do more to help people adapt to this new way of working, like the need for more conversational, multi-turn interactions". 

"As we bring Copilot to more customers, we will continue to rely on this kind of feedback to refine Copilot and help guide users as they adapt to this new way of working,” Microsoft said on Tuesday.

 The company, which is headed by Satya Nadella, had in March announced the beta version of Copilot, which is designed to assist people with generating documents, meetings, emails, presentations, etc. The company said that so far it has tested the new assistant feature with 20 enterprise customers including global corporations like Chevron, Goodyear, General Motors, and Dow.

The company has now rolled out the early access program for the Copilot tool, with additional capabilities like ‘Co-pilot Whiteboard’ that helps in Microsoft Teams meetings and to brainstorm more creatively and effectively, the company said. Users can ask the copilot to generate ideas, organise them into themes, create designs, and also summarise the content.

The Copilot in Outlook will offer coaching tips to users. It will also include suggestions on clarity, sentiment, and tone to help them write more “effective emails and communicate more confidently”, the tech giant said while unveiling the new capability. The assistant chatbot in OneNote will use prompts to draft plans, generate ideas, create lists and organise information to help customers find what they need easily.

The announcement comes amid media reports about Microsoft working on a new version of ChatGPT for privacy-focused business customers. Previously, the company also introduced an AI-powered Bing search engine and Edge browser. In January 2023, the company confirmed an extended partnership with leading generative AI firm OpenAI, with some reports pegging a possible investment round at $10 billion.

The company has also released some of the findings of its 2023 Work Index report, which points at an emerging need for new skills, from prompt engineering to reimagining workflows with AI. Around eighty-two per cent of business leaders think employees will need new skills in the AI era. The report adds that the number of LinkedIn job postings in the US that reference GPT or GAI (generative artificial intelligence) grew around 79 per cent year-over-year in 2023.