With a fleet of new announcements, Microsoft is further expanding its already broad Copilot offering. Proprietary company data, specified tasks and integrations with mixed reality speak to the far-reaching AI ambitions the Redmond tech giant has in mind.
First, Microsoft emphasizes that Copilot has been well-received amongst the workforce: 70 percent say it has made them more productive. Significantly, 77 percent don’t want to ditch the AI assistent at this point.
These findings will only have reinforced the tech giant’s belief in the AI path it is forging for itself. In addition to investing in AI-focused hardware, Microsoft says it wants to significantly expand the Copilot experience, under the credo “Microsoft is the Copilot company.” Meanwhile, the 365 package has taken on a Copilot function on many fronts, which until now have been all kinds of separate solutions with the same approach. Time to change that, Microsoft must have thought.
Indeed, at the center of it all is a new Microsoft 365 Copilot Dashboard, which should provide organizations with insight into productivity gains. Using Microsoft’s own Work Trend Index, this tool shows how employees are utilizing AI capabilities.
A Copilot for every application and every company
For the most successful implementation of the Copilot features, Microsoft has tried to make them more specifically applicable. The new Copilot Profile is aimed at pushing the AI tool towards giving appropriate answers based on the type of job description it assists. As an example, the company cite capabilities within Teams, such as preparing meetings, whiteboarding and having AI take notes.
Copilot Studio is a new low-code tool that allows Copilot to be customized. Business-critical data can be integrated to create custom copilots within a company. In addition, Copilot Studio works with connectors, plug-ins and GPTs, allowing IT teams to pick the best data sources for particular queries.
The comprehensive offering already has some off-the-shelf solutions for specific tasks, meaning not every company has to start tinkering for every job role under the sun. With Copilot for Service, for example, Microsoft is facilitating the use case for AI assistance in customer service tasks. During a customer interaction, the employee can ask the AI tool in human language for certain insights. Without citing specific examples, we can assume that it can base itself on logistical data, for example – in such a scenario, a customer asks where their package is at, after which the employee can give an input to Copilot for Service to find out. This would ideally save time and perhaps already be able to come up with a good draft answer on behalf of the customer service agent.
Microsoft Copilot for Azure can also be used to support IT employees. As a “unified chat experience,” this tool is meant to understand the role and goals of the employee in question. Next, Copilot for Azure should simplify the management of applications and IT infrastructure. Thus, through the AI tool, IT staff could gain additional information about capabilities within Azure and be able to automate certain tasks.
Mixed reality
Until the announcement of the Apple Vision Pro, mixed reality (or “spatial computing” as Apple calls it) had faded somewhat into the background, associated with the Metaverse’s decline. Still, several industries have adopted Microsoft HoloLens, for example in aircraft construction or other parts of the manufacturing industry. Now that, too, is getting a generative AI addition in the form of Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides. With this tool, Microsoft aims to simplify complex tasks without any typing. In fact, human gestures should be the only control, much like Apple claimed with the Vision Pro earlier this year. For now, this new Microsoft offering is only available for the HoloLens 2, but if successful, it is imaginable that it will be more widely deployable.
Tip: Start building your own apps for the Apple Vision Pro
Bing isn’t missing out either
Bing’s resurgence as a search engine may not really be happening, but it certainly has found a new life as an AI assistant within Windows and Edge. Now, this tool is getting a new name: Copilot in Bing. The solution formerly known as Bing Chat Enterprise will now be named Copilot Pro. Microsoft promises that both products will be available soon as a fully-fledged non-preview product.
It’s rather apparent Microsoft hasn’t been sitting still when it comes to its Copilot offerings. All of 2023 has already been dominated by the tech giant’s continuously expanding AI offerings, fueled by OpenAI’s technology. Now it seems to have realized that users stand to benefit from a better overview and some more concrete use cases. That’s probably why it is launching Copilot solutions that companies can set up with their own data and offers a dashboard to measure productivity. Other applications count mainly as examples of what becomes possible with such an AI-powered assistant, which seems like it could be useful for almost any employee.
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