Microsoft’s Latest AI Advancements: ChatGPT Technology to Revolutionize Word, Excel and Outlook
On Thursday, Microsoft unveiled its strategy to integrate artificial intelligence into its popular productivity tools such as Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, and Word, with the aim of revolutionizing the daily work routines of millions of users.
During the event, the company revealed that Microsoft 365 subscribers will soon be able to use an AI-powered “Co-pilot” that assists in editing, summarizing, creating, and comparing documents.
This new feature, which is built on the same technology as ChatGPT, is much more robust and less personified than its predecessor, Clippy.
Co-pilot and Business Chat
With the Co-pilot, users can transcribe meeting notes during a Skype call, summarize lengthy email threads to suggest responses, request specific charts in Excel, and transform Word documents into PowerPoint presentations in mere seconds.
Microsoft is introducing a new feature called Business Chat that operates as an agent accompanying the user during their work and attempting to comprehend and organize their Microsoft 365 data.
According to Microsoft, the agent will be aware of the user’s daily schedule, email contents, documents, presentations, meeting attendees, and chat conversations on Teams.
Using Business Chat, users can instruct the agent to undertake tasks such as producing a status report by summarizing all project-related documents across multiple platforms and composing an email update to be sent to the team.
The AI Race
This announcement comes shortly after Microsoft integrated similar AI-based capabilities into Bing, coinciding with a technology industry competition to create and implement AI tools capable of transforming the way people work, shop, and innovate.
Last week, Google, a competitor of Microsoft, announced comparable AI functionalities for its productivity tools, such as Gmail, Sheets, and Docs.
The announcement comes just 48 hours after OpenAI, the company responsible for Microsoft’s AI technology and the developer of ChatGPT, introduced their latest version, GPT-4.
Early tests and a demonstration by the company have astounded many users with the model’s capabilities to generate legal complaints, pass standardized tests, and produce a functional website from a hand-drawn sketch.
OpenAI has stated that it has implemented additional safeguards to maintain conversation coherence and reduce biases in the tool.
Disrupting Industries
Nevertheless, the recent updates and the efforts by major tech companies to incorporate this technology may raise difficult questions regarding the potential for AI tools to disrupt industries, facilitate academic dishonesty, and alter our interaction with technology.
Microsoft’s new Bing browser has already started using GPT-4, for better or worse.
According to a Microsoft representative, users of Microsoft 365 who access the new AI tools should bear in mind that the technology is still a work in progress and that information generated by the tool should be verified.
While OpenAI has made considerable strides with its latest model, GPT-4 has comparable limitations to earlier versions.
The company acknowledges that the model can still commit “simple reasoning errors” or be “too trusting in accepting transparently false statements from a user” and does not verify facts.
Nevertheless, Microsoft is confident that the changes will significantly enhance the working experience of users, making tasks less tedious and more straightforward and enabling them to devote more time to analysis and creativity.