After announcing its Microsoft 365 Copilot chatbot for automating various tasks in various Microsoft Office applications, Microsoft demonstrated the tool's capabilities on Thursday and introduced a new extension called Business Chat.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is a generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology based on GPT-4, an extensive language model (LLM) created by OpenAI, which is also the foundation of the popular chatbot ChatGPT.
Microsoft has integrated ChatGPT functionality into Word, Excel, Teams, PowerPoint, Outlook, Power Platform, Viva, and other applications to enable users to collect data to create everything from marketing campaigns and business proposals to slideshows. Features are now only available to a small community of users. the company has not announced a general availability date.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the new 365 Copilot chatbot “will radically transform the way computers help us think, plan and act.
"Just as we can't imagine computing today without a keyboard, mouse, or multi-touch, in the future we can't imagine computing without co-pilots and natural language cues to help us intuitively continue, summarize, reason in a chain of thought. , review, modify and act”, he said.
Copilot combines a large language model (LLM) with the 365 suite and the user data it contains. Using a chatbot interface and natural language processing, users can pose questions to Copilot and receive human-like responses, summarize online discussions, and generate commercial products.
Copilot in Word, for example, can jump-start the creative process by giving the user a first draft to edit and repeat, saving hours of typing, searching and editing time, Microsoft said in a blog post.
“Sometimes Copilot will be right, other times it will be wrong, but it will always get you up and running,” Jared Spartaro, Microsoft vice president, Modern Work & Business Applications, said in the blog post. "As an author, you're always in control, advancing your unique ideas, prompting Copilot to shorten, rewrite, or provide feedback."
Microsoft
An example of Copilot in Word using meeting notes to create a draft proposal.
Microsoft says Copilot is more than OpenAI's ChatGPT built into Microsoft 365. Officials called it a "sophisticated processing and orchestration engine" that combines the power of LLMs, "including GPT-4," with business applications and data. of a user's Microsoft 365. in Microsoft Graph, now available to everyone in natural language. (Microsoft Graph is the company's API development platform that connects multiple services and devices.)
Copilot in Microsoft's new Business Chat feature, for example, can be used to create a summary of a chat conversation, extract specific points, add recent customer contacts, access Outlook calendar entries, and add presentation slides. to create a business proposal, all based on the chat conversation.
Business Chat users can also type prompts in natural language, such as "Tell my team how we updated the product strategy," and it will generate a status update based on meetings, emails, and morning conversations.
Copilot in PowerPoint can help create presentations with a simple message, adding relevant content from a document that a user may have created last week or last year. And Copilot in Excel can analyze trends and create professional-looking data visualizations in seconds.
"We all want to focus on the 20% of our work that really matters, but 80% of our time is spent on intense tasks that bog us down. Copilot lightens the load," said Spartaro.
Copilot in Teams can summarize key talking points, including who said what and where people are aligned and where they disagree, and can suggest actions, all in real time during a meeting.
With Copilot's intuitive AI-powered capabilities, the chatbot allows users to take advantage of advanced functionality without the need for expertise in using Microsoft 365 apps. "The average person uses less than 10% of what PowerPoint bitch. Co-pilot has unlocked the remaining 90%”, dijo Sumit Chauhan, vicepresident of the Microsoft Office product group.
Microsoft
Copilot in PowerPoint turns ideas into presentations by creating text, image, and video content from multiple sources.
For example, someone working at a global manufacturing company who wants to create a proposal for a client can ask Copilot to use client notes in OneNote and other internal documents to quickly generate a first draft. You can then use the format generally used for proposals based on a user's history.
'It inserts product images and pulls relevant images from other files. You can even include a short summary at the top of the document, and Copilot can make suggestions to strengthen the proposal, such as adding FAQs, which it will generate for you,' he said. bye.
Integrating large language models (LLMs) with a user's business data, including that stored on OneDrive (documents, photos, and videos), allows for greater creativity without the hard work of putting it all together yourself, according to Spartaro.
Microsoft
Copilot in Excel works together with users to help analyze and explore data.
Microsoft was honest that its chatbot would make mistakes, but promised to fix those problems "quickly." Generative AI technology, such as that built into Microsoft's Bing search engine or Google's Bard chatbot service, has shown glaring response errors. Chatbots also have problems with "hallucinations" or generating strange content based on errors.
Microsoft said it is fully aware of the privacy and security implications of generative AI engines, has reviewed its product, and will continue to monitor it closely.
“We don't just build rooted into the system, we've integrated verification into the experience,” Spartaro said. "We've added citations and introduced friction forms to encourage back-and-forth collaboration. We've included feedback mechanisms so people can let us know when we're wrong.
“Our goal is to empower people. To help people get started, Copilot suggests good prompts. If you don't like what he does, there's a 'try again' button,” Spartaro said. "You always have the option to use, adjust, delete or cancel."
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