Microsoft Introduces AI Features To Improve Productivity In Its Software Suite

Microsoft Corp introduced its latest plans to bring artificial intelligence to more users. (photo: dock. Pixabay)

JAKARTA - Microsoft Corp introduced its latest plans to bring artificial intelligence to more users, in response to a series of announcements from its competitor, Google, by upgrading its widely used office software.

The tech company introduced a new "AI copilot" for Microsoft 365, its product package which includes Word documents, Expel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and Outlook emails. According to Microsoft, this AI will provide drafts on these applications, accelerate content creation and save employee work time. Initially, this feature was only available for business customers selected for trial.

Redmond-based company Washington, which excels from its competitors through investing in OpenAI's ChatGPT creators, also introduced a new "business chat" experience that can attract data and perform tasks across apps with written orders from users.

"We believe this new AI generation will open a new wave of productivity growth," Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive, said in a live presentation.

This week's news surge includes new funding for AI startup Adept, reflecting how big and small companies compete with each other to implement software that can change the way people work.

The attention center is Microsoft and Google owner Alphabet Inc, who on Tuesday 14 March introduced the AI feature for Gmail and the "magic stick" to create a script in his own word processor. The capabilities displayed by Microsoft and Google are similar.

The rise to investing and building new products began with last year's ChatGPT launch, a chatbot sensation that shows the potential of the so-called big language model.

Technology like this learns from past data on how to create new content, strengthening Microsoft's new AI copilot along with business data and other applications. This type of AI is also growing rapidly. Just this week, OpenAI began releasing a stronger version known as GPT-4, which is included in chatbots on Microsoft's updated Bing search engine.

In one of the company's biggest updates on Thursday, March 16, Microsoft said AI could reveal the miracle of computing the Excel spreadsheet software - which has been a domain of trained analysts - for anyone who can describe the calculations they want in simple text.

Microsoft also said AI could summarize email threads and virtual encounters when they occur in its Teams collaboration software, similar to a live note by AI shown by Google to reporters this week.

According to Micosoft, Microsoft's new business chat experience can also answer questions like, "Tell my team how we updated the product strategy," by taking instructions from email, meeting, and a morning chat thread.