Satya Nadella has heralded the dawn of a new era of AI as Microsoft launches Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Copilot builds on the hype of ChatGPT and large language models and is designed to boost the productivity of Microsoft 365 users.
Speaking during a prerecorded virtual event, Nadella and Microsoft execs showed the AI-powered software drafting emails, creating PowerPoint presentations, writing Word documents and analysing sales data in Excel.
Nadella said: We’re at the start of a new era of computing,” he said.
“Over the past few months, powerful new foundation models, together with accessible natural language interface, has ushered in an exciting new phase of AI.
“For the first time, we have access to AI that is as empowering as it is powerful.”
Copilot is designed to learn from the way users work and take on mundane tasks using natural language. In the example of email creation, the demo showed Copilot writing a first draft before the user tweaked the text.
During the PowerPoint demo, Copilot was shown creating an entire presentation to celebrate a student’s graduation, including graphics, text and images of the student. Later in the event, it transformed a Word document into a full presentation.
In OneNote, Copilot created a plan and checklist for planning a party, while in Excel it pulled out trends related to data and created graphs to visualise the results.
Microsoft showed other uses spanning the full Microsoft 365 portfolio, including in Dynamics and Outlook and Power Platform.
Microsoft Teams
Microsoft Teams commanded a chunk of airtime in the event, showcasing Copilot’s functionality across the entire platform. Copilot can follow meeting progress, summarise chat logs and pick out messages linked to certain projects.
A meeting recap feature includes summaries, notes and follow-up tasks that came out of the meeting. Users can use Copilot to ask for more detail, including why certain decisions were made and what other options were on the table.
Users can also make these requests in live meetings, including questions like ‘what meeting points are not yet resolved?’
Outside of meetings, Teams was shown as a hub for the whole Microsoft 365 portfolio – including Viva and Dynamics – with Copilot transferring data between the different apps.
Linked to Teams is Business App – a standalone product powered by Copilot that resembles the experiences seen with the ChatGPT and Bing AI interfaces. In the demonstration, Copilot was seen in the left-side Teams chat window, with the user interacting with it in the same way they would with human beings.
ChatGPT
Microsoft lifted the bonnet on the technology driving Copilot, revealing it uses more technology than just ChatGPT.
The Copilot System is a “sophisticated processing and orchestration engine” which pulls together three technologies: Microsoft 365, Microsoft Graph and large language models.
Prompts from the user in Microsoft 365 are processed by Copilot, pulling in information using the Microsoft Graph gateway such as data from emails and Teams chat. This is then sent to the large language model which turns it into the type of usable responses seen with ChatGPT.
Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President of Modern Work and Business Applications, at Microsoft, said: “By grounding in your business content and context, Copilot delivers results that are relevant and actionable.
“It’s enterprise-ready, built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, privacy and responsible AI. Copilot marks a new era of computing that will fundamentally transform the way we work.”
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
Microsoft was careful to position Copilot as a companion for workers, not a replacement.
Throughout the event, Nadella and other Microsoft execs stressed that AI needs to be used ethically and responsibly. Microsoft intentionally included examples of Copilot missing the mark in all demos to stress that it should not be left to complete tasks unsupervised.
Copilot is currently being used by a small group of commercial Microsoft customers to ensure stability and make sure it is resilient against hackers and jailbreakers. Microsoft did not reveal when it might be generally available or how much it would cost.
“With this empowerment comes greater human responsibility,” Nadella said. “Just as an individual can be aided by AI, AI can be influenced positively or negatively by it.
“As we move into this new area, all of us who build, deploy and use AI have a collective responsibility to do so responsibly.
“Fundamentally, AI must evolve in alignment with social, cultural and legal norms in a democratic society.”
“Vigorous debate and scrutiny will both continue to be super important.”
