Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) announced new plans to put artificial intelligence in the hands of more users on Thursday, following a flurry of announcements this week by rival Google (GOOGL.O) with updates to its own widely used office software.
Microsoft 365, the company’s product suite that includes Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and Outlook emails, received a new AI “Copilot” preview. AI will first be available for testing in 20 enterprises, with the goal of speeding up content creation and freeing up workers’ time, according to Microsoft.
The Redmond, Washington-based company also demonstrated a new “business chat” experience that can pull data and perform tasks across applications on a user’s written command, outpacing peers through investments in ChatGPT’s creator OpenAI.
The rush to invest in and build new products began with the release of ChatGPT last year, the chatbot sensation that demonstrated to the public the potential of so-called large language models.
This type of technology learns from past data how to create new content. It has evolved quickly. OpenAI has just begun the release of a more powerful version known as GPT-4. This, along with an older GPT-3.5 model, business, and application data, is said to underpin some of Microsoft’s Copilot features.
According to RBC analyst Rishi Jaluria, the new capabilities, which are available through Microsoft’s cloud, are poised to attract business and turn around slowing revenue growth.
The Copilot will “drive more usage of Microsoft Office and increase the differentiation versus competitors,” according to Jaluria.
TAKING NOTES FOR YOU
On Thursday, one of the most significant updates from the company was in Excel.
Microsoft claims that AI can make the computational wizardry of its spreadsheet software, which has long been the domain of trained analysts, available to anyone who can describe a calculation in plain text.
Microsoft’s Copilot can summarize virtual meetings as they happen in its Teams collaboration software, similar to the live notes that Google showed reporters this week.
This capability was demonstrated in an interview by Jon Friedman, a corporate vice president at Microsoft. The Copilot generated bullet points summarizing Reuters’s questions, such as whether Microsoft can profitably roll out the technology.
Large language models necessitate a significant amount of computing power and money to run.
According to Friedman, Microsoft will make the deployment cost-effective.
During the interview, the Copilot summarized his response as follows: “Microsoft is working on lowering the cost and increasing the speed and fidelity of the models, but did not disclose the pricing or tiring of the copilot system.” (It should have said “tiering.”)
According to Friedman, Microsoft is testing Copilot with some customers to fine-tune the technology and ensure that its answers are accurate. “What’s amazing about large language models is that they’re very confident, and they get things wrong,” Friedman added.
According to Friedman, the most significant development on Thursday was Microsoft’s business chat experience, which can handle tasks across applications. For example, a user can ask, “Tell my team how we updated the product strategy,” and the AI will pull information from a morning’s worth of emails, meetings, and chat threads, according to Microsoft.
Friedman envisions a more personalized AI in the long run.
“We frequently force people to adapt to the machines and systems we’ve built,” Friedman explained. “This is something that will gradually adapt to you.”
