A few days after Google announced the redesign of Google Workspace with generative AI, Microsoft made a similar announcement. Your favorite Microsoft Office apps, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and Teams, are getting an AI facelift.
On Thursday, the tech giant announced the arrival of Microsoft 365 Copilot, which integrates large language models (LLMs), including Open AI’s GPT-4, into Microsoft 365 applications.
Microsoft explains that Copilot will be integrated into applications in two different ways to help you behind the scenes while you work, but also actively when you request it.
Microsoft 365 Apps will be integrated with Copilot
Microsoft 365 Apps will be integrated with Copilot, which will optimize them to work alongside you and help you get things done throughout your workflow, according to Microsoft.
Microsoft Business Chat, which already existed in another form, will be an active assistant capable of generating answers to all the questions you have based on your Office applications and data, including your calendars, emails, chats , documents, meetings and contacts.
The example provided by Microsoft was to ask Business Chat to “tell my team how we updated the product strategy”, which the bot would be able to respond to based on your morning meetings, emails and your cats.
A complete first draft of text to get you started on your writing process
GPT’s text generation capabilities will be demonstrated in Word, where Copilot can produce a complete first draft of text to get you started on your writing process.
Microsoft also says Copilot will also be able to help with visual projects such as creating a presentation from a simple prompt in PowerPoint and creating data visualizations in seconds in Excel.
Finally, Microsoft specifies that Copilot will also optimize your interactions with others. In Outlook, it will help you empty your inbox in seconds so you can reply to important emails faster. In team meetings, it can help you summarize key talking points and suggest actions to take.
Microsoft is testing Copilot with a small group of customers
All of these features are similar to Google’s new Workspace, which includes text generation for Google Docs and emails, AI-generated presentations in Slides, and AI text summarization.
Like Google, Microsoft has not yet made these AI functions available to the public. The company says it will bring Copilot to all of its productivity apps in the coming months. Currently, Microsoft is testing Copilot with a small group of users to improve the model based on their feedback.
Source : ZDNet.com
