While the news of Microsoft Copilot’s imminent release dates — as well as the AI-powered productivity tool’s snazzy new logo — inevitably stole the headlines of last week’s Microsoft Surface event, several compelling lines from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote address preceded those revelations and were unfairly lost in the Copilot excitement.
Nadella enthusiastically reflected upon the hectic year since ChatGPT’s arrival into the public consciousness, how he envisions Microsoft innovating in AI, how AI will revolutionise how we work, how it ushers in a “new age of computing”, and how Copilot can transform what we expect from AI productivity tools.
A Whirlwind 10 Months for AI
It’s hard to imagine that it was just 10 months ago that ChatGPT first came out, and it’s clear if you just look around since then that something new is happening in our industry and far beyond, and it’s exciting.”
Nadella is capturing in one sentence the whirlwind experience that the tech space has undergone over the past ten months since ChatGPT was released. Businesses and research centres have been working on AI for years (if not longer), but the arrival of OpenAI’s conversational AI service pushed the foot onto the accelerator.
As Dialpad COO and Cofounder Brian Peterson told UC Today a few weeks ago, “Things really advanced quickly in the last few months” in the development of its own in-house AI DialpadGPT after the company had spent the last five years gradually building and refining it.
Dialpad’s product is illustrative of the industry as a whole, as many vendors have directed significant time, money and resources towards developing large language models (LLMs) or productised AIs that can be sold to customers in 2023. Zoom, Google, RingCentral, and Amazon are among those who have explored how AI could revolutionise their services to customers and internal workflows. Even Apple is working on its own generative AI chatbot.
Then, as Nadella goes on to illuminate, there is Microsoft, who stormed to a lead ahead of the competition through investing in and exploring integrations with OpenAI and ChatGPT. Copilot promises to have an even more significant impact.
Microsoft’s Confidence in Copilot
In a market that’s dominated by one player, we’re striving to breathe some innovation and life into it.”
While some inevitable marketing colour and salesmanship are behind Nadella’s comments, they could also reflect Microsoft’s confidence in its AI solutions and its sincere belief it will transform the space.
Windows Copilot experienced a soft relaunch during the event itself, it is now a unified product across most Microsoft apps rather than a distinct Copilot for each service. Its elegant UI and intuitive chat process could prove innovative in seamless and engaging experiences. Likewise, the robust feature sets and emphasis on security and privacy behind the enterprise-targeting 365 Copilot and Bing Chat Enterprise grant Microsoft a potential edge over many competitor AI products.
“Innovation and life” are big promises, but Microsoft certainly looks like it will at least hit the ground running when all three of its principal commercial AI solutions are generally available.
Copilot As An All-Inclusive Tool
From developers who say finally Copilot has brought joy and flow back to their work to artists who say it’s sparked their creativity, to all of us as knowledge workers and first-line workers, we’re able to rid ourselves of the (sometimes) drudgery of this work. Business leaders finally have a new tool to be able to re-imagine, simplify, and optimize business processes, whether it’s sales, marketing, finance, or customer service.”
This section of Nadella’s keynote excitingly teases AI’s potential for revolutionising the work lives of every employee at every stage of a business and in every industry. It neatly captures the idea that its use as a productivity tool can open up a world of opportunities that extend far beyond email generation.
The line about business leaders is also interesting — not only to convey its influence for every level of employee intrigued by 365 Copilot, but also because 365 Copilot will cost $30 per user per month for users with Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium subscriptions. Microsoft will be keen to sell it to decision-makers of businesses of all sizes, so highlighting its transformative potential to executives could be pivotal in powering sales, given its relatively steep asking price.
A New Age of Computing
To me, there are two real underlying technology breakthroughs with this new generation of AI. We’ve been talking about NUI for decades, but I feel we are at the place where we finally have a new natural interface. It starts with language, but it’s going to quickly go beyond that for you to see, to hear, to interpret, and make sense of our intent and the world around us. And a new reasoning age which helps us make sense and find patterns in all that is digitized, which is people, places, things. They have created a new age of computing.”
During his keynote, Nadella interestingly cited the work of Douglas Engelbert, a pioneer who paved the way for many of personal computing developments. One of Engelbert’s most renowned philosophies was that the complexity and urgency of humanity’s problems were growing at an accelerated rate and that it needed help to manage and process them. Engelbert envisioned a new collaboration of people and computers that would offer humanity agency in addressing these problems.
This, Nadella suggested, is where the age of AI can surpass the groundbreaking achievements of the PC and the internet. Nadella argued that AI could, through a natural interface of language, images, sounds and more — as well as advanced reasoning skills — fulfil Engelbert’s vision of a computer that can not grant human beings that agency over mounting complexity and urgency.
In other words, Nadella doesn’t believe AI will be restricted to summarising Teams meetings and personalising Outlook signatures, as helpful as those services will be for most customers.
AI as a ‘Single Unified Experience Centred Around You’
The more context in memory a Copilot has and the more planning capabilities it has, the more valuable of a companion it becomes. This requires that what we think of today as separate categories, research, productivity, operating systems, and devices, all come together and evolve. The context and intelligence of the web, your work data, and what you’re doing at the moment on your device, are presented together in a single unified experience centred around you.”
This suggests that Copilot might be able to fulfil Nadella’s promise of bringing life and innovation to the AI market. The prospect of Copilot seamlessly extracting information from one app, platform, file or device to provide a solution to any task or query a user might have is exciting.
Copilot has received some flippant comments that it resembles a sleek-looking 2020s update of Clippy, Microsoft’s virtual assistant from the 1990s. If Copilot lives up to even a fraction of its potential as a holistic, all-encompassing tool that can genuinely transform how we work and live on our computers, then it will prove significantly more groundbreaking and valuable than a glossy productivity assistant.
