Microsoft announced an improved artificial intelligence-powered personal assistant that supports the work of all departments within a company without requiring direct commands. The tech giant is stepping up its competition with Google in creating AI products for business.
The most valuable company in the world said that its “Copilot”, feature, would be able now to serve entire teams within an organization and not just individuals. It could, for example, create tasks and assign them to certain people or manage the agenda of a group meeting.
Seattle-based group says business customers will also be able create “agents” which can be configured to work without human instructions. The digital assistant, according to the company, can automatically respond to incoming emails by sending out suggestions or responses or processing customer orders instantly.
The company is hoping that Copilot will be a key product in driving future profits.
Copilot was “a game changer” for “taking the drudgery from work”, according to Rajesh Jha.
Microsoft has taken a lead in the development of generative AI thanks to its $13bn in OpenAI investment. It is now competing with Google and Amazon for similar services.
The updates on Tuesday come just days after Google announced a new range of AI capabilities, which are “multimodal”, and include digital agents who can answer questions in video, audio or text. Meta and OpenAI also released similar products and upgraded their systems.
The announcements were part of an effort by groups such as Google, Apple and OpenAI that aims to create AI-powered intelligent assistants capable of taking the initiative to complete tasks for users.
Hardware companies hope that customers will also be drawn to new AI features and replace their older devices. Apple launched this month a line of iPads that are powered by the next generation M4 chip.
Microsoft announced a series of AI-enhanced tablets and PCs on Monday to challenge Apple’s dominance. Certain devices from companies such as Dell, HP, and Samsung will be equipped with Copilot features that can, for example be prompted to “recall” a user’s past actions.
Microsoft announced Tuesday that customers of its AI services will now be able use OpenAI’s latest model GPT-4o as well as the family of Small Language Models known as Phi-3. This includes a new multimodal Phi-3 Vision model.
The company said that a new capability to connect Copilot to Microsoft 365 with a wide range of data sources, applications and data sets — including legal data and customer records — will allow the intelligent assistant to “reason”, across a broader input range.
Charles Lamanna (Microsoft’s Corporate Vice-President for Business Applications and Platforms) said that users could require a human to approve AI-suggested action, such as allowing them to review an AI-generated message before it is sent. Users can also view in real-time the steps taken by an agent to reach a particular outcome.
Jha said, “We don’t say autopilot. We call it co-pilot because we want to be clear.” “We do not believe that the co-pilot is independent from human agency.”
In preview, the upgraded Copilot tools are available for business customers later this year.
Microsoft’s new AI tools are said to have helped boost sales but it hasn’t disclosed the number of Copilot users.
Copilot is “central to Microsoft’s AI narrative”, but the “broader adoption curve” remains “shallower than many originally anticipated (including us), specifically among office workers”, wrote Deutsche Bank analysts in April.
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