Microsoft today unveiled Copilot for its 365 apps, unleashing an AI-powered chatbot that can automate tasks in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more. It was rumoured yesterday AI was coming to Microsoft 365 and now it’s here.
This is all powered by its partnership with OpenAI and the latter’s newest GPT-4 technology announced earlier this week.
Copilot can help users in Word write a first draft, create presentations in PowerPoint just by asking it, while also analyzing trends in your Excel spreadsheet in seconds. In Outlook, Copilot can write emails and in Teams it can summarize key discussion points. Copilot pops up in the sidebar of apps like classic Clippy (RIP), where you can ask it to perform a task. It then spits out results in seconds, saving you time and productivity.
“Today marks the next major step in the evolution of how we interact with computing, which will fundamentally change the way we work and unlock a new wave of productivity growth,” said Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft, in a statement. “With our new copilot for work, we’re giving people more agency and making technology more accessible through the most universal interface — natural language.”
Check out the impressive video below, with this tech coming in the “months ahead”:
Microsoft also announced Business Chat today powered by GPT-4 while leveraging data from your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings and contacts. You can ask things like, “Tell my team how we updated the product strategy,” and it will reply with an update based on your latest meetings, emails and chat threads.
I think it’s safe to say Microsoft has a huge lead here with the power of GPT-4 on Apple’s productivity apps. Siri doesn’t stand a chance.
