Microsoft Unveils Copilot Wave 2: AI Integration Across 365 Suite

Microsoft announces Wave 2 of Copilot with integrations across all 365 products

Microsoft has announced a host of new upgrades coming to its AI assistant Copilot for both enterprise and personal customers as a part of its 'Microsoft 365 Copilot: Wave 2' event held yesterday. These features included further integration with Microsoft 365 applications and improving performance by moving to the GPT-4o model. "It has just been 18 months since we launched Microsoft 365 Copilot. It is rapidly becoming an organising layer for work; how work gets done, transforming the workflow and work artifacts for more than 400 million people who use Microsoft 365," CEO Satya Nadella said during the live stream. He added that the adoption rates for Copilot were faster than any other new Microsoft 365 suite and daily users at work had almost doubled quarter over quarter. During the livestream, the company announced 700 product updates of which over 150 new features have been shipped already, they said. With these updates, Microsoft explained that Copilot would grow in three major ways. First, it will bring the web, work and pages together through Microsoft Pages. When users sign in to their work account, there will be a tab available to switch from Work to Web. Microsoft calls the Work tab as BizChat, a workflow in Copilot that can get answers from your work data from Microsoft 365 applications. Microsoft launches Copilot internally to boost AI adoption by developers: Report Now, with Pages, users can take the insights they get from Copilot and edit them, add to a Page and share them with your team for everyone to work together. Anyone can edit and share the document via Pages. Secondly, Copilot is being deeply integrated with other Microsoft apps like PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, etc. Like Copilot in Excel will support users with data visualisation, conditional formatting and formulas and more. In PowerPoint there's a new Narrative Builder that helps users form the first draft of their presentation in minutes. While Copilot in Teams can draw the contents of a meeting and give a summary of what happened if a user missed it. Thirdly, Microsoft introduced Copilot Agents, AI assistants that can do specific tasks autonomously with very little help from the user. There's also a new agent builder with Copilot Studio using which users can build Copilot agents which can be later called for any 365 app whenever required with a simple "@" command. Published - September 18, 2024 10:02 am IST Read Comments

Microsoft introduces new Copilot AI features; Aims to upgrade its 365 suite

Microsoft launches new features for its Copilot AI platform. Just a year after it launched its Copilot in Windows 11 and 365, the company brought 'Wave 2' of Copilot. The tech giant says that the new feature will change the user experience of its 365 suite. In an official blog, Microsoft announced that it will bring advanced AI features for its 365 suite. The company aims to add more AI features in its Excel, Teams, Outlook, PowerPoint, Word,and OneDrive apps. Microsoft brings AI features for 365 suite Last year after Microsoft launched its Copilot for Teams, the company said that they have seen an improved user experience. "Our customers tell us Copilot in Teams has changed meetings forever -- in fact, it's the number one place they're seeing value," Jared Spataro, Microsoft Corporate Vice President, AI at Work, said. With Copilot you can hold meetings and get a transcript and a summary of the meet. But with the new AI features you will also be able to get subtitles of the meet. This can provide better transparency about what is being said and the transcript version. For example, if you are not able to understand some discussions during the meeting, you can ask Copilot to track what was said. It will scan quickly through the meet and solve your query. It scans through the chat and tracks the whole meeting so that every minute details are being captured. Microsoft has also introduced the 'Copilot pages,' which is made for multiplayer AI collaboration. This is a workspace where you can create ideas, brainstorm and edit contents in chat. For example while having a chat you can edit the conversation. In addition to this you can share these 'pages' with your team. In addition to this Excel sheet will also get an update. With new AI features, Excel can also work with text. Earlier it could only work with data and numbers, but now it can do much more. You can also work with Python in Excel with Copilot. This can help you to solve higher level problems. This can include working on advanced analytics such as machine learning, forecasting, risk analysis and forecasting, among others. The best thing about these advancements is that you don't need to use coding. Furthermore, Microsoft claims that this can be a representation of adding a skilled data analyst in its team. The way ahead The tech giant also aims to improve other sectors of its 365 suite. This includes Outlook, Word and PowerPoint, among others. Copilot in Outlook will help you to sort through millions of emails. The "Prioritize my inbox" will help you to get the important mail as a priority. Next you get the Copilot in Word, which will allow you to get information from meetings and emails. This means you can add references in Word from emails. PowerPoint will also get 'Narrative Builder' which can help you to build an outline for a first draft, just with a prompt. Furthermore, Microsoft has also improved OneDrive to help you access files quickly with AI. Additionally it will also roll out Copilot AI agents that can be your AI assistant.

Microsoft Announces New Copilot AI Features For Businesses

You can now build Copilot agents to find information from your organization's knowledge base and take action as well. At the Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 event, the Redmond giant announced several Copilot features, powered by AI. First off, Copilot Pages offers a canvas where you can research using AI and collaborate with your team members. You can use this tool to find current information from the web and add curated details to Pages seamlessly. You can share Pages via a link and other members can also improve it further. You can also reference other documents from the Work tab and it can find the information and add it to Pages. Basically, Copilot Pages make it easier to research using the web and your work documents, and further, collaborate with your teammates. Next, Microsoft announced Copilot in Excel with Python support. Basically, Copilot in Excel can now run Python code to perform advanced data analysis. And the best part is that it executes the code in Excel itself. If you ever wanted a data analyst by your side to do number crunching, Copilot can now do that for you. After that, Microsoft announced Narrative Builder for PowerPoint, powered by Copilot. It can create a compelling pitch deck while keeping your company's template in mind. You can even add other Office documents and ask Copilot to improve the presentation. Not to mention, it can pull images from your corporate directory and create a personalized presentation. Next, Copilot in Outlook can now prioritize your inbox. It analyzes your emails, understands the context, and sets priority for emails. You can sort messages by Copilot priority and get back to the important ones first. Best of all, you get a summary on top to quickly get the gist. Besides that, you can build agents using Copilot Studio and SharePoint. You can provide access to all your business documents and catalogs, and you can ask questions to get quick information. In SharePoint, you can even configure the agent to take action. For example, you can connect supply chain management and it can order the parts. Finally, you can compare files in OneDrive using Copilot and find key information about a meeting in Microsoft Teams, in case you missed it.

Copilot Wave 2: Here are all the new AI features to try out | Digital Trends

Microsoft has announced an update to Copilot, the company's all-in-one AI assistant. "Wave 2," as Microsoft calls it, is a series of updates that gives Copilot more capabilities within popular Office applications, Copilot agents for businesses, and even a new feature called Copilot Pages. Let's start with Pages first. Microsoft calls it a "dynamic, persistent canvas" that's designed for "multiplayer" collaboration, built right into Copilot. Microsoft has been busy integrating Copilot into most every application imaginable, but think of Pages as a way of allowing you to get more done without having to ever leave Copilot itself. Microsoft 365 Copilot | Copilot Pages It's a quick and convenient place to pull stuff out of Copilot and save it somewhere that's easily accessible. More than that, collaborators can easily jump in and contribute to that same Page. In some ways it feels duplicative of what you can do elsewhere, but for Microsoft, it's a way of enticing people to spend more time with Copilot, which represents the company's big bet on AI. Recommended Videos Microsoft puts it this way: "Pages takes ephemeral AI-generated content and makes it durable, so you can edit it, add to it, and share it with others." Copilot Pages is a free update to Microsoft Copilot, but it requires having access to a Microsoft Entra account. Microsoft says it'll roll out "in the coming weeks," and it did not comment on whether the feature would roll out more broadly. In addition to Pages, Microsoft is also updating Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and OneDrive. They're small tweaks, but Microsoft hasn't left any app out of the Wave 2 update. Here's the breakdown of what's new in each app: Word: Quickly reference web data and work data from other apps and documents, including information from emails and meetings. There's a new "on-canvas" start experience that puts Copilot from and center. You can even now use Copilot inline as you're writing. Coming in late September 2024. Excel: The programming language Python now works within Copilot in Excel, allowing you to access "advanced analysis" using natural language. Excel can now handle data that isn't formatted as a table, including text or numerical data. There's also some new skills for Excel pros like support for more formulas and conditional formatting. Python functionality is currently in public preview. PowerPoint: A new feature called Narrative Builder expands on the idea of creating entire presentations only from prompts. You can now customize the outline for your presentation and even align it specific branding with approved graphics from a company's SharePoint. Teams: Expanding on what Copilot already does in Teams, Copilot will now be able to "reason" over the meeting transcript and chat, allowing you to ask it questions about what you may have missed. Outlook: A new feature called "Prioritize my inbox," which uses AI to reorder your inbox based on what's important, such as answering emails from specific people in your organization or emails in ongoing threads. Coming in late 2024. OneDrive: Copilot can now "reason" over your files and find information in them. Think of it as an advanced AI-powered search function for OneDrive. Lastly, Microsoft is announcing Copilot agents and agent builder, a new feature of Copilot Studio. This isn't something most people have access to, but for large organizations, these Copilot agents can be designed to complete work autonomously. Here's how Microsoft describes what they can do: "They range in capability from simple, prompt-and-response agents to agents that replace repetitive tasks to more advanced, fully autonomous agents." That description certainly sounds interesting and useful, but many of us will likely never experience how these agents work in their current form. Still, once developers and large organizations get their hands on these AI agents, they could be a game-changer.

Microsoft reveals Copilot Pages, integrates more AI into flagship products

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) released what it's calling the Wave 2 of Copilot, as the software titan integrates artificial intelligence features further into its mainstay products. "Copilot brings info from the web, puts it on a canvas, and allows you to share and collaborate with your co-workers," said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of AI at work at Microsoft, during a company announcement this morning. "It quickly pulls info from the web and into the canvas to save steps" "Pages is an entirely new way to work," he added. "Web data and work data come together in Pages. It is designed for multi-player, AI collaboration." Microsoft also added Copilot features across its Microsoft 365 apps, including Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, Word, OneDrive and Outlook. Many of these new features will be generally available today for Microsoft 365 Copilot subscribers. Others will be released in the weeks ahead. Copilot agents were also revealed. "They come in all shapes and sizes," Spataro said. "They can reason, be trained and even know when to ask for help. Some are completely autonomous and can orchestrate other agents." Copilot Studio can now be utilized to build custom agents. "These agents can draw from valuable data in SharePoint, Microsoft Dynamics 365, or your line of business systems, and help Copilot become significantly smarter about your business and its processes," the company said. "You can also expand the capabilities of agents by equipping them with new skills, such as sending emails, updating records, or creating support tickets." "This is just the beginning of Wave 2," Spataro added. "We have so much more to show you in the next two months."

Microsoft Copilot Gets Faster, Smarter and More Collaborative

Microsoft unveiled the next iteration of its virtual AI assistant Copilot, adding new AI features across its various apps, including Excel, Word and Outlook. The update, which is powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o technology, is part of the company's greater efforts to make it easier for all users to access and use AI tools to do their work. In addition to the new capabilities, Microsoft said the speed to which Copilot responds now is more than two times faster than the previous version. Some of the updates include an AI-assisted collaborative canvas which allows multiple users to interact, edit and make changes at the same time. In a blog post, Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of AI at work at Microsoft, called it "an entirely new work pattern -- multiplayer, human-to-AI-to-human collaboration." In Microsoft Teams, Copilot can now "reason" over a meeting transcript and meeting chat, enabling users to ask if there were any missed questions. A new feature in Outlook called Prioritize my Inbox can analyze and identify the most active email threads to prioritize insights and email summarizes, and even learn the users' leaders. Microsoft said users will soon be able to teach Copilot the specific topics, keywords, and people that are most important to further help with prioritization. More AI integration is also coming to Microsoft Word, particularly with the ability to pull up web and work data, such as PowerPoint and PDFs, encrypted documents, emails and meetings notes. For businesses, Microsoft is officially launching a previously-announced tool called Copilot agents, which can execute menial tasks, such as monitoring inboxes or doing data entry, to free up time for traditional employees. The company continues to double down on building out AI software for its products alongside touting AI-powered hardware. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced a lineup of Copilot+ PCs that are packed with AI tools and advanced processors, in an effort to stay ahead of the growing AI arms race and boost lagging PC sales.

Microsoft Unleashes Another Wave of Copilot Business Tools

Microsoft's big Copilot push has resulted in over 150 new features for its generative AI tools since they first became available, and today we got a second wave of Copilot business features. Updates include: Copilot Pages, or documents built with AI; the new Business Chat (aka BizChat); easy-to-build Copilot Agents for automating business processes; and new generative AI features for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, and OneDrive. "Copilot customers grew more than 60% quarter over quarter, while the number of people who used Copilot daily at work doubled," Microsoft says. And with OpenAI's GPT-4o and "enhanced orchestration," responses are more than two times faster on average, and response satisfaction has improved nearly threefold, it says, particularly in Copilot for Teams meetings. Talk to Copilot like it's a coworker. This feature brings information from company documents, presentations, email, calendars, notes, and contacts to give context to chats, which are further informed by data from the public web for something the company is calling your Microsoft Graph. Microsoft 365 Copilot Business Chat requires a Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription, which is $360 per year. Availability starts today at Microsoft365.com/Copilot. Pin Copilot to your workflow in the Microsoft 365 app, an option that's also coming soon to Outlook and Teams. Copilot Pages Microsoft refers to this feature as "the first digital artifact for the AI era." You can now generate pages from a Copilot conversation, share them with colleagues, and tag people for follow-up tasks, just as you would a Word doc. Start a page from an Edit in Pages button at the bottom of the chatbot window, or ask Copilot to use an existing document as a template for a new proposal. Copilot Pages give your chats a persistent document that you can follow up on and easily refer to, unlike a Slack chat that gets lost over time and can be hard to find in search. For Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, the Pages feature starts rolling out today. It will be generally available later this month and will also be accessible in the free Microsoft Copilot. Copilot Agents A new simplified Copilot Studio interface works as an agent builder within Copilot chat. This lets you create agents that automate business processes based on your business's data in SharePoint. Microsoft365 Copilot now includes a Build Copilot Agent button to get you started. The new features will roll out to all customers through October. Copilot in Excel Excel is one of the more popular business analysis tools around, but it can be complicated to figure out how to get it to do what you need. Copilot in Excel can suggest and generate formulas, summarize your spreadsheet using pivot tables and charts, apply formatting, and answer general questions about the application. Another new tool in Excel is Copilot in Excel with Python, which lets you create code via natural language for deeper analysis. You can use it to do things like forecasting revenue for the next two years. The Python code itself is accessible right from the formula bar. Copilot in PowerPoint Microsoft announced two new tools for its presentation software: Narrative Builder and Brand Manager. The first lets you interactively draft a presentation based on text prompt, with the ability to reference your own files coming later. The second makes use of your company's branded templates and later will let you draw from a repository of your approved images. Copilot in Teams, Outlook, Word, and OneDrive Microsoft also has other announcements for its Microsoft 365 productivity suite.

New Microsoft Copilot Update Wave Focuses On Page, App Integration, Agents

'Think of Copilot as the UI for AI,' Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says. Microsoft CEO and Chairman Satya Nadella said the vendor is on a second wave of iteration on its Copilot brand of artificial intelligence tools, showcasing a new Copilot Pages canvas offering, more integrations with existing productivity applications and capabilities around AI agents. Nadella and his team showed new Copilot capabilities Monday during an online event. The CEO of the Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant said that the number of people who use Copilot daily at work has nearly doubled quarter over quarter, with customers coming back to deploy more seats. He also described Copilot adoption rates as faster than any other new Microsoft 365 suite. "You can think of Copilot as the UI for AI," Nadella said. "It helps you break down the silos between your work artifacts, your communications and your business processes." [RELATED: Microsoft To Release New AI Surface Devices For Business Users, Challenges Apple Products] About 1,000 customers have given Microsoft Copilot feedback, leading to 700 product updates and 150 new features this year, according to the vendor. Copilot customers grew more than 60 percent quarter over quarter. Among the wave two features, Copilot Pages has started rolling out to Microsoft 365 Copilot users and will become generally available (GA) later this month, according to the vendor. Pages will be made available to the 400 million-plus users who can use free Microsoft Copilot when signed in with an account for Microsoft Entra (formerly Azure Active Directory). Copilot in Excel is GA. Microsoft PowerPoint narrative builder is GA. Copilot in OneDrive, Copilot in Word and an improved reasoning feature in Copilot in Teams become GA this month. Copilot agents and agent building in Business Chat-also called BizChat and meant as a central hub for leveraging web data, work data and line-of-business data for Copilot insights-become GA in "the coming weeks," according to the vendor. Copilot in Excel with Python is in public preview. Copilot in Outlook's "prioritize my inbox" feature enters public preview later this year. Agent builder in SharePoint enters preview in early October. Microsoft's Copilot agents, now GA, are AI assistants that can automate and execute business processes. The agents can range in simplicity from simple prompt-and-response to full autonomy for advanced, repetitive tasks, according to the vendor. The agents can work in the background, with Copilot as the management and orchestration tool. Agents still follow responsible AI policies and data never leaves the M365 trust boundary, according to the vendor. Visual creator agent and other pre-built agents are also available. The creator agent will also soon add video generation to its image and design generation abilities. The agent builder feature coming to BizChat and SharePoint and powered by Copilot Studio will allow users to share information and ask questions by tagging the agent with the "@" symbol. Copilot Studio will be used for more customization. Microsoft joins a host of other AI vendors investing in so-called agentic AI, including Salesforce and ServiceNow. Microsoft bills Copilot Pages as a canvas for multi-user AI collaboration and "the first new digital artifact for the AI age." Pages allows users to edit, add to and share AI-generated content. Users on a page see everyone's work in real time and can pull content from data, files and the internet. Copilot in Excel allows users to work with data not formatted as a table and leverage XLOOKUP, SUMIF and other formulas. Users can also apply conditional formatting and use Copilot to improve charts, PivotTables and other visualizations. Copilot in Excel also now works with text as well as numerical data. The Copilot in Excel with Python feature in limited access for now allows for forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning, complex data visualization and other advanced analyses with natural language and no coding. PowerPoint's new GA narrative builder feature brings in Copilot for creating first-draft presentations in minutes with a prompt. Users ask for an outline with topics and can edit and refine the presentation. Users will "soon" gain the ability to add files to the outline to ground topics and pull in company-approved images from the SharePoint Organization Asset Library. The upcoming improved reasoning feature in Copilot in Teams will make it so Copilot can go over meeting transcripts and chats and, when asked by a user, point out unanswered questions during the meeting. The upcoming Copilot in Outlook "prioritize my inbox" feature aims to get users to the most important messages based on email content, the user's supervisors and past emails that have gotten responses from the user. Copilot will generate summaries of each email, say why it prioritized the message and provide insights, according to Microsoft. Users will "soon" have the ability to teach Copilot specific topics, keywords and people that should lead to emails getting marked "high priority." Copilot in Word will allow users to reference web data and work data from Word, PowerPoint, PDFs, encrypted documents, emails and meetings, according to Microsoft. Already added to Copilot in Word are a new on-canvas start experience with suggested prompts and the capability of inline Copilot collaboration on specific sections of a document. The upcoming Copilot in OneDrive promises users reasoning power over all files to find information, gain insights, summarizes and compare up to five files. Users can see details and file differences in the summary without opening the files, according to Microsoft.

The 'next wave' of Microsoft's Copilot AI is here

Microsoft (MSFT) has released "the next wave" of its Copilot artificial intelligence tools in its suite of work apps. New AI-powered features include Business Chat, which databases web data, work data, and business data into a new tool called Copilot Pages, where human and AI-generated data can be edited, added to, and shared between work teams. Microsoft also launched Copilot in Excel with Python, making it possible to use the programming language to work with data in Excel with natural language, not coding. The newly launched version of Copilot also includes AI-enabled features for Powerpoint, Outlook, Word, OneDrive, and Teams, which Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has said he uses "a lot." Microsoft also introduced Copilot agents, or AI assistants, that can be used to automate certain business tasks. Copilot agents are like other AI assistants which "range in capability from simple, prompt-and-response agents to agents that replace repetitive tasks to more advanced, fully autonomous agents," Microsoft said. And Copilot agents are equipped with the company's Responsible AI, so data doesn't leave Microsoft 365's "trust boundary," according to the company. Microsoft also has an agent builder, which allows users to create their own Copilot agent. Since Copilot was made generally available, Microsoft said it has received feedback from nearly 1,000 customers, and the company has shipped over 150 features and capabilities. And Copilot is now powered with OpenAI's GPT-4o, according to Microsoft, which has "dramatically improved performance." In March, it was reported that some Microsoft customers were complaining that Copilot was falling short of OpenAI's ChatGPT. "Every time a customer starts using it, they start comparing it to ChatGPT and saying, 'Aren't you guys using the same technology?'" an unnamed Microsoft employee with knowledge of customer feedback told Business Insider. However, employees said Microsoft 365 Copilot had mostly positive feedback, but some customers using older versions of Microsoft's suite of business tools were expecting the more advanced Copilot to work with it, leading to the unfavorable comparisons with ChatGPT.

Microsoft's latest 365 Copilot updates bring enhanced AI tools to Excel, PowerPoint, and Teams: All you need to know

Tech giant Microsoft is enhancing its 365 Copilot, an AI-driven tool designed for enterprise clients, with a series of innovative features aimed at improving productivity and collaboration. Announced on Monday, these updates include new functionalities across several Microsoft 365 applications, along with the introduction of Copilot Pages, a groundbreaking feature that facilitates real-time collaboration among multiple users on shared projects. As per the Microsoft blogpost, one of the most notable enhancements is the Copilot Pages feature, which provides a shared, interactive space where both human users and the AI-powered Copilot can contribute and refine content. This allows teams to create, edit, and manage project data in a collaborative environment, streamlining workflows. Users can initiate Copilot by issuing a command, and the output is presented as a new page that is accessible by colleagues across the organization. Once the page is open, it operates much like a Word document, where users can insert tables, text, links, and images. Furthermore, users can prompt Copilot to autonomously add information, creating a seamless blend of human input and AI assistance. Currently, this feature is in beta testing with select businesses and is expected to roll out more broadly later this month. In addition to the collaboration tools, Microsoft is enhancing other key apps within its 365 suite. For example, Excel now includes the integration of Python, enabling users with no coding expertise to perform complex tasks such as forecasting, risk assessments, and even machine learning. This functionality is driven entirely through natural language prompts, simplifying advanced data analysis for a broader user base. The feature is already available for public testing. In PowerPoint, Microsoft has unveiled a Narrative Builder, a tool that allows users to generate an initial draft of a presentation with just one command. This feature creates a structured outline of editable topics, and in future updates, users will be able to attach files to the outline, enabling the AI to produce more refined drafts. Other improvements include updates to Microsoft Teams, which now integrates spoken and written conversations to generate more accurate transcripts, and Outlook, where a new Prioritization feature helps users focus on the most urgent emails by analyzing the inbox. Lastly, Copilot Agents, customizable mini chatbots designed for specific tasks, are being introduced to help automate workflows for enterprise clients. These agents can operate independently, processing tasks without the need for constant prompts. The agents are tailored with unique datasets to ensure relevant and precise results. 3.6 Crore Indians visited in a single day choosing us as India's undisputed platform for General Election Results. Explore the latest updates here!

Microsoft Copilot can now help with Excel formulas, make PowerPoints, and more

New Copilot capabilities come to Microsoft 365. Credit: Pavlo Gonchar / SOPA Images / LightRocket / Getty Images After a year and a half of Copilot, the generative AI tool is getting to a genuinely useful place. That literal and figurative place is in Microsoft Excel. At the Microsoft 365 Copilot livestream on Monday, CEO Satya Nadella announced Copilot features for the OG spreadsheet program and other 365 apps like PowerPoint, a collaborative "canvas" called Copilot Pages, and customizable AI Agents. While the livestream was mostly meant for Microsoft's enterprise customers and not for the casual viewer (it was hosted on LinkedIn, for Pete's sake), there were plenty of features and announcements for every Microsoft 365 user to appreciate. We've rounded up the takeaways from the event that you need to know about. As mentioned above, Copilot for Excel is a noteworthy addition to the suite of capabilities. Copilot can help Excel users format data, help with common formulas like XLOOKUP and SUMIF, and visualize data in charts and pivot tables. It can also work with text, not just numbers, so users can search for keywords and phrases and analyze data accordingly. Copilot in Excel is live today. Microsoft also shared that Copilot in Excel understands Python, so users who aren't familiar with the programming language can use Python without having any prior coding knowledge. In PowerPoint, Copilot can generate an outline of a presentation from a prompt by pulling in your data from 365 sources. Then it can slot information into individual slides and design a presentation -- even pulling in brand pictures or DALL-E 3-based AI-generated images. Copilot's "Brand Narrative" feature in PowerPoint doesn't have a launch date, but it's coming soon, according to the announcement. Copilot was already used for summarizing meeting transcripts in Teams, but now it can also incorporate conversations happening in the chat. This feature will be available this month. For Outlook, Copilot can prioritize important emails in your inbox and give summaries of what each email entails, and generate recommended responses. Sounds familiar? Apple recently announced a similar feature for its Mail app that uses Apple Intelligence to prioritize and summarize your inbox. Prioritizing your inbox will be available for public preview at the end of 2024. Word also leverages Copilot's summarization and data gathering capabilities. With the Copilot sidebar, users can pull in work data from the emails, other 365 apps, and the web to generate drafts within your document. This is also now generally available. Last but not least, the whole thing that makes it all possible is OneDrive, the cloud storage platform that stores all your work data -- it's also getting an AI-powered facelift. On OneDrive, Copilot will help you find and sort through relevant files, and summarize them, so you don't have to click around looking for the file you need. This is rolling out now to OneDrive now and will be broadly available later this month. With Microsoft's new Copilot Pages tool, users can share Copilot responses with other team members, and collaborate on a project in a freestanding canvas within BizChat. "You and your team can work collaboratively in a page with Copilot, seeing everyone's work in real time and iterating with Copilot like a partner, adding more content from your data, files, and the web to your Page," the announcement said. It eliminates the need for independent research within Copilot by allowing other users to build upoon the initial Copilot response. Copilot Pages are available through BizChat starting today, and will roll out to the free Microsoft Copilot version in the coming weeks for users with a Microsoft Entra account. Unveiled last May, Copilot agents act as customizable AI-powered assistants for automating certain tasks. Similar to a Google feature called AI Teammates that was showcased at Google I/O, users can share internal knowledge and databases with agents and train to run certain tasks in the background. This could be creating an agent to onboard a new employee, or an agent that serves as a field service technician for troubleshooting on-site problems with machinery. As of today, agents are generally available. With this announcement, Microsoft has also launched an agent builder, a user-friendly tool which helps users easily build an agent without the need for prompt engineering know-how. Copilot agents will be available through BizChat and will roll out to customers in the coming weeks.

Microsoft announces updates to AI-powered 365 Copilot with Pages and autonomous agents - SiliconANGLE

Microsoft Corp. today announced updates and improvements to its generative artificial intelligence-powered Copilot family for its Microsoft 365 apps and the addition of new features such as new autonomous agents that can automate and execute business processes on behalf of users. Upfront and center, Microsoft announced Copilot Pages, a new AI feature designed for team collaboration that can bring data in from the web or corporate knowledge bases and then allow it to be shared between users. It starts with a standard Copilot prompt, where a user asks a question about any subject and the large language model brings in information from Business Chat, also known as BizChat, a centralized data repository that can house web data, work data and business data. It then builds a response that can be put into a Page, which acts like a sharable canvas. "Pages takes ephemeral AI-generated content and makes it durable, so you can edit it, add to it, and share it with others," said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of AI at work at Microsoft. "You and your team can work collaboratively on a page with Copilot, seeing everyone's work in real-time and iterating with Copilot like a partner." Pages rolls out today for Microsoft 365 Copilot customers and will be generally available in Sep. 2024. Microsoft has announced a number of apps that will be getting AI updates and enhancements including Excel, Powerpoint, Teams, Outlook and Word. Copilot in Excel is now generally available, allowing users to work with business data in ways they never have before by using queries to ask for visualizations and analysis. The AI is capable of working with text in addition to numerical data by applying deep machine learning reasoning. Microsoft said it included new skills with support for more formulas including XLOOKUP and SUMIF, conditional formatting, and the ability to iterate on visualizations and charts. Basic and advanced users will also be able to ask Copilot for Excel to generate Python code to conduct powerful analysis of their data. Python is one of the most popular and understandable programming languages for understanding advanced analysis of data including forecasting, analysis, machine learning and visualizing complex data. The AI can assist with this with no coding knowledge needed. The AI behaves just like a skilled coding partner and data analyst capable of doing all the work. Currently in public preview, the new Python capability can produce all the code to produce vivid charts and visualizations for beautiful data analysis. Afterward, advanced users can also go through the Python code and modify it themselves. PowerPoint is getting a specialized narrative builder that allows users to prompt Copilot to generate a first draft of an outline that allows the creative director to remain in control of the process. From there the builder can generate a slideshow, including paragraphs of text, bullet points and images. A brand manager will make certain that Copilot produces images that fit the company's branding policy and theme using DALL-E 3. Soon, the company said, the AI will pull in company-approved images from SharePoint. Copilot in Teams will now be able to fully understand the context of a meeting transcript to allow users to ask questions about what was said and typed in chat. For example, Copilot could be asked if anything was left unanswered during the meeting and quickly reveal what needs to be followed up on. Outlook is also getting an AI upgrade with Copilot providing the ability to catch and prioritize important emails, including a summary at the top and the AI's reasoning why the email is important. Copilot in Teams will be generally available in Sep. 2024 and Copilot in Outlook will be in public preview starting later this year. Coming late Sep. 2024, Copilot in Word will allow users to reference web and work data directly in documents, by pulling in information from other Word docs, PowerPoint, PDFs, email and meetings. This will allow users to quickly incorporate their entire knowledge base into their writing process right where they work. This means that users can activate the Copilot right in their document at any point, or select text to have it modify blocks of text inline. Both capabilities are generally available. Agents are a type of AI assistant that automates tasks on their own and does work for humans by working alongside them, they can range from simple chatbots to agents that replace repetitive work, to more advanced autonomous bots. Microsoft has made it easy to build agents with an agent builder powered by Copilot Studio, which makes it easy to make an agent right from BizChat. All a user has to do is describe the type of agent they want to build in natural language, the tasks and skills that it needs and the agent builder will complete the necessary knowledge base and skill connections that it needs. After that is done, the user can go into a more advanced mode to add more connections, such as SharePoint or other connectors. Once the agent is finished, users can even @ mention it as they would any other teammate and it will respond just like any other Copilot and it will respond within its area of knowledge. For example, a user could create an agent that is designed specifically to assist field technicians with company knowledge about its products, how to fix them, their manuals, the ability to order new parts and escalate if a problem requires a higher level of service. Copilot agents and agent builder in BizChat will be generally available to all customers over the coming weeks. Microsoft also said that an agent builder is coming to SharePoint and will enter public preview in early October.

Microsoft announces new Copilot features to encourage businesses to sign up -- and it's already working

Key Takeaways Microsoft has announced a host of new Copilot features for Microsoft 365. Copilot Pages is a collaborative canvas powered by AI for real-time editing. Copilot enhances Excel for advanced analytics and PowerPoint slide generation. Copilot agents automate tasks based on user descriptions, available with a $30 enterprise subscription. Microsoft hosted a 30-minute event on LinkedIn today, detailing what it calls the "second wave" of Microsoft 365 Copilot. The company announced a range of new Copilot-powered features for apps such as Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, as well as a completely new feature called Copilot Pages. The aim is to bring more value to the $30 enterprise tier for Copilot, which many companies have been hesitant to pay since it was launched last year. Related 5 ways to create stunning PowerPoint slides in minutes with Copilot Say goodbye to tedious presentations: Copilot is here to save the day 1 The new Copilot Pages feature draws from the web and work files The first new feature discussed at the Microsoft event was Copilot Pages. This feature is essentially a collaborative canvas tool like Notion or Apple's Freeform but heavily powered by AI. Users work on a split screen where the left side is a chat with Copilot, and the right is a shared Page that colleagues can access and edit in real-time. In the demonstration, VP for AI at Work Jared Spataro shows how users can draw on past documents, files, and meetings to guide Copilot's responses. Source: Microsoft For example, he asks Copilot to create a bulleted list of customer requirements discussed in a previous recorded meeting. Copilot can also pull information from the web to add to the Page, including citations, so its work can be fact-checked. The idea is to save the time and energy it would take to conduct web searches and search through files and meeting transcripts to put together all of this information manually. As for the quality of Copilot's output, Microsoft says it has upgraded to ChatGPT-4o and there has been a three-fold improvement in response satisfaction. Source: Microsoft Copilot has also been added to Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook Copilot has also been added to Excel, allowing users to perform more advanced analytics through natural language prompts, including analytics with Python. Whatever you ask Copilot to do, its response will first be posted to the chat, and then you can choose to add it to the spreadsheet if you're satisfied with the result. The new Narrative builder in PowerPoint is the same kind of feature. It allows you to create a plan and generate slides using Copilot, with it drawing on your work files and media libraries to populate the slides. It takes care of everything from images to content, animations, slide transitions, and speaker notes. In Microsoft Teams, Copilot now keeps track of both the meeting transcript and what's happening in the chat so it can provide a better overview of everything that happens. In the demonstration, it combs through both to pick out questions that haven't been answered yet. Other features include the "Prioritize my inbox" feature for Microsoft Outlook that pushes emails from certain people or covering certain topics to the top of your inbox. Copilot agents lets you create specialized programs Source: Microsoft The last announcement was Copilot agents. This feature allows you to build a Copilot program or "agent" that will perform a specific task for you. You describe what you want the agent to do and where you want it to get its information from. For example, you can make an agent from a collection of files to act like an expert on the contents. Once it's created, you can use natural language to ask questions about everything the files contain. As always, the features available to you depend on your subscription tier. To get access to everything, Microsoft wants businesses to pay $30 per month per employee -- a price that has made companies hesitant until now. However, Microsoft paired today's feature announcements with another announcement: a contract with Vodafone for 68,000 Copilot licenses. That's a cost of just over two million dollars a month. After testing the AI suite, Vodafone said they saved an average of three hours a week per person. There's no doubt that Microsoft hopes this big contract will help them land more contracts in the future, but the new features will need to prove useful to make that happen. Since all the announced features center around saving time, it means employees really need to be able to trust Copilot's output. If you find mistakes and have to spend too long fact-checking, it will quickly become pointless. We'll keep you updated on the reception to this new wave of Copilot features in the coming weeks. Related ChatGPT vs Microsoft Copilot vs Google Gemini: What are the differences? If you've been trying to figure out which generative AI tool is better, you've come to the right place

Microsoft announces next phase of Copilot innovations

Microsoft's Copilot Wave 2 has arrived, bringing agents and unanswered questions. First up are BizChat and Copilot Pages. BizChat is a central hub, intended to bring together all a customer's data - be it web, corporate, or line of business - into a single place in the flow of work. Lurking as a persistent canvas in BizChat is Copilot Pages, which takes ephemeral AI-generated content and makes it durable so it can be edited, added to, and shared with others. "This is an entirely new work pattern - multiplayer, human to AI to human collaboration," Microsoft said. It's also only available to customers that have paid for Copilot for Microsoft 365. However, it will be coming to customers using the free Microsoft Copilot with a Microsoft Entra account. We're not sure it is an entirely new work pattern. It looks an awful lot like copying and pasting the response from a Copilot request into a shared document and then fiddling with it. Although Microsoft says Pages has Enterprise Data Protection, the company has been very light on the details. The Register asked Microsoft if Pages respected user permissions - for example, preventing confidential information in a response being shared - but have yet to receive a reply. The company also failed to make any representative available for interview. It's not just Pages, Copilot is making its presence felt throughout the Microsoft 365 suite. Copilot in Excel is now generally available, and Copilot in Excel with Python is in public preview. Copilot has appeared in PowerPoint in the form of the Narrative build, aimed at "iterating together to build a great first draft in minutes while keeping you in control of the creative process," and Brand Manager, to ensure presentations are on-brand. Just when you thought endless PowerPoint presentations couldn't get any blander. Copilot has also shown up in Word and is due to hit OneDrive in a month as an improvement in the current search functionality. It will also, according to Microsoft, "compare up to five files with a clear, easy-to-read summary of the details and differences within your files - without opening a file." Presumably, something has to open the files at some point to build those summaries. Probably Copilot, to whom we're sure customers would have no problem entrusting their data. Microsoft did not provide a spokesperson to answer any questions about the technology. It usually publishes something called a Big Book of News to accompany significant announcements. This was more like a Light Leaflet of Marketing. But then, the company seems to be all about LLMs nowadays. Rounding out the "innovations," which include Copilot in Teams to summarize meetings and Copilot in Outlook to analyze messages, are Copilot agents. Copilot agents are Microsoft's latest attempt to automate business processes, except this time with bots. "They range in capability from simple, prompt-and-response agents to agents that replace repetitive tasks to more advanced, fully autonomous agents," according to Microsoft. The company has announced an agent builder in Copilot Studio to simplify the creation of services. "This is just the beginning of Wave 2 of Copilot innovation," wrote Microsoft in its blog post. None of the services appear to require a Copilot+ PC. Presumably, that will have to wait until Wave 3, and whatever Copilot innovation that will bring forth. Hopefully a bit more than a version of Recall that won't cause security researchers to snort with derision. ®

Your New Coworker Might Be Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft is rolling out the second wave of its Microsoft 365 Copilot, which should bring improvements to AI collaboration and productivity tools. The update will include the introduction of Copilot Pages, which are AI chat pages that let you add other team members. Copilot Pages focuses on collaboration with an AI. Basically, AI-generated content can be edited, added to, and shared with other people in real time. Teams can collaborate within a page, working with Copilot as a partner and adding content where needed. It's almost as if Copilot is an employee alongside you. Tell it what to do, and it will work with everyone else on the same Copilot Page. Another interesting addition is Copilot Agents, designed to automate business processes. These are now generally available to anyone with a business account. These AI assistants, ranging from simple prompt-and-response to fully autonomous agents, work within the Microsoft 365 trust boundary and are easily manageable with Agent Builder. Copilot Pages and Agents are part of a push toward a future where AI is integrated into daily work processes. Copilot is also expanding across the Microsoft 365 suite, like Outlook. Excel users will benefit from the general availability of Copilot, improved formula support, and the integration of Python for advanced data analysis. PowerPoint introduces Narrative Builder and Brand Manager to streamline presentation creation. Copilot will also help with team meetings by creating and reasoning over meeting transcripts and chat conversations. Outlook users will experience email prioritization based on content and context, while Word integrates web data, work data, emails, and meetings directly into the writing flow. OneDrive integrates Copilot to summarize and compare up to five files quickly. Adoption of Copilot has grown significantly, with a 60% quarter-over-quarter increase and doubled daily active users. Organizations like Vodafone, Amgen, Teladoc, Finastra, and Honeywell were named in the announcement as companies using Copilot. According to the announcement, there should be more updates in the coming months to improve Copilot. These updates are currently exclusive to businesses and organizations that pay for Copilot access, not regular people with individual Copilot Pro subscriptions. It's not clear when, if ever, any of these features will roll out to personal Microsoft accounts. Source: Microsoft

Microsoft 365 Copilot users can collaborate with AI and each other in BizChat Pages

While it's unclear if mainstream PC users are actually using Microsoft's Copilot AI, the company claims that businesses using MS 365 Copilot are seeing plenty of benefits. According to a Microsoft survey, Copilot users at Honeywell save up to 92 minutes per week, while customer service agents at Teladoc are saving up to five hours a week by using the AI tool to draft responses to questions. Now that we're a year beyond the MS 365 Copilot launch (at a costly $30 per seat), Microsoft is eager to throw more AI features at corporate drones. Most intriguingly, Microsoft is upgrading its Business Chat app, which so far has been a way to interact with Copilot's across your emails, calendar entries and other data, alongside data from your organization. Now it's getting better collaboration with the addition of Copilot Pages, which will serve as a sort of "multiplayer" way to share AI generated content with your coworkers. "With Pages, all the data in your organization -- whether created by humans or AI -- is persistent, accessible and valuable," Microsoft CVP Jared Spataro wrote in a blog post. "Pages takes ephemeral AI-generated content and makes it durable, so you can edit it, add to it, and share it with others... This is an entirely new work pattern -- multiplayer, human to AI to human collaboration." It's surprising that it took a year for Microsoft to bring better collaboration to the Business Chat app, as that's an expected feature of every workplace app these days. Having a place for employees to share their existing Copilot queries simply makes sense: Coworkers may want access to the same information, and it's also environmentally wasteful to have people running the same Copilot search multiple times. (Generative AI queries are far more costly for the environment than simple web searches.) Microsoft says Pages will be available today to MS 365 Copilot users, and it'll also be coming to free Copilot customers with Microsoft Entra accounts "in the coming weeks." In general, Microsoft says Copilot queries are more than two times faster now compared to launch, because it's relying on the newer GPT4o model. The company is also upgrading AI capabilities across the suite of MS 365 apps: Excel is getting Python support for more complex queries; PowerPoint's Narrative builder capability is widely available, allowing you to craft the story of your presentations with AI help; and Teams can now scan across meeting transcripts and their accompanying chats. The other Office apps aren't left out either. Outlook will soon let you choose topics, people and keywords to highlight for the "Prioritize my inbox" feature. You'll also be able to reference meetings and emails directly within Word documents, one OneDrive will let you summarize and compare files without opening them using Copilot. And if you need even more Copilot AI help, business can also create Copilot Agents directly within Business Chat and SharePoint. They're like chatbots that can peer within your corporate files, and you can also tag them in comments like a typical cooworker. While we still need to see these Agents in action to determine if they're actually useful, at the very least, you can feel less guilty about assigning them some menial information processing at the end of the work day.

Microsoft rolls out new Copilot AI features; adds features to Excel and Outlook - Times of India

Microsoft has unveiled a series of new features and tools to enhance its generative AI suite, aiming to make AI more accessible and valuable for business workers. The company's latest additions include automated agents, expanded capabilities for its Copilot assistants, and a new collaborative tool for multiple workers to interact with AI. This comes as businesses are increasingly exploring ways to leverage AI for productivity and efficiency. One of the highlights is the introduction of Copilot Pages, a new document type within the BizChat app that enables teams to collaborate using AI tools.Microsoft has also expanded the functionality of its Copilot suite across various applications. For instance, Copilot for Excel now supports Python, while PowerPoint's Copilot has been enhanced with "brand manager" and "narrative builder" roles. Additionally, Teams' Copilot can now combine information from both chat and voice recordings of meetings. Microsoft is also rolling out a new feature for Copilot's chat application called Pages, which gives coworkers a space to work together using data they create and as well as content generated by the AI software. Pages saves the AI-generated material in one place and lets workers edit and share it with other employees. The new feature is being released Monday (September 16) will be widely available later this month. "You can ideate with AI and collaborate with other people," said Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella. To streamline email management, Microsoft is introducing a tool later this year that will automatically organize inboxes and summarize messages. The company is also making its Copilot agents feature generally available and has launched simplified tools for building agents. Microsoft shared several customer examples and statistics to showcase the impact of its Copilots. Vodafone, for instance, has paid for 68,000 workers to use these AI assistants. This announcement comes as other business software companies are also evolving their AI strategies. Microsoft has indicated that this is just the beginning of its AI innovation wave. The company plans to share more details about how Copilot can enhance productivity and business value for customers in the coming months. Key Features and Highlights * Copilot Pages: A new document type in BizChat for collaborative AI-powered work. * Enhanced Copilot Suite: Features like Python support in Excel, specialized roles in PowerPoint, and improved meeting transcription in Teams. * Automated Inbox Organization: A new Outlook tool for organizing and summarizing messages. * Agent Builder Tools: Simplified tools for creating custom agents. The TOI Tech Desk is a dedicated team of journalists committed to delivering the latest and most relevant news from the world of technology to readers of The Times of India. TOI Tech Desk's news coverage spans a wide spectrum across gadget launches, gadget reviews, trends, in-depth analysis, exclusive reports and breaking stories that impact technology and the digital universe. Be it how-tos or the latest happenings in AI, cybersecurity, personal gadgets, platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and more; TOI Tech Desk brings the news with accuracy and authenticity.

Microsoft's Copilot 2.0: A Game-Changer for Productivity and Creativity

Copilot is now deeply integrated throughout Microsoft's core productivity tools, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneDrive. At the helm of the list of updates was Copilot Pages, a new tool only for Microsoft 365 subscribers. Now, referred to as BizChat, aggregates insights from work data for smooth team collaboration. Using Copilot Pages, users can edit, share, and analyze results with teammates seamlessly. This feature enables you to browse the internet for the relevant information needed for multiplayer AI collaboration, thereby streamlining the decision-making process for organizations.

Copilot Wave 2 supercharges productivity with AI across all your Microsoft 365 apps

In this new way of working you can open up the Copilot chat interface, now called Business Chat, and from there combine all the knowledge Microsoft 365 has about you and your organization with the knowledge it can find on the web by creating collaborative documents called Pages. So, you could start by asking Copilot about something on the web, then once it's found what you're looking for you hit the 'Edit in Pages' button to pull that Copilot response into a new Copilot Page (which is a pop-up document window, containing all the information you're interested in), and then you can continue to expand it, sharing and collaborating on it with all your team members. Pages (not to be confused with the Apple app of the same name) documents look very similar to Word documents. You can go back to Business Chat and perform more searches for information, then bring that new data into your Pages document. There's a simple switch at the top of the Business Chat window that enables you to switch between Web or Work. Switch it to Work and Copilot will be able to tap into the knowledge contained in all your work documents; so you could prompt Copilot with something like "make a report similar to that one we did last month for Eric, but with the new data", and it will compile it for you. A new narrative builder has been added to PowerPoint that helps you craft a story for your next presentation. This will create a whole deck of slides from a prompt using Copilot, complete with transitions and speaker notes. Type your prompt in answer to the question, "Create a presentation about" and watch it work its magic. You get a draft outline, which you can reorder, edit, and add new sections to. Once you're happy click on 'Generate slides' and Copilot will produce your whole presentation, pulling in images from your corporate library, or it can generate images using DALL-E 3 if required. Now you'll be able to combine the power of Python, with Copilot and Excel to do some serious number crunching. You can get Excel to do forecasting, risk analysis and visualization of complex data using natural language prompts in Copilot, and all without having to write a line of code yourself. The ability to intelligently summarize your inbox is being brought to Outlook with a new feature called 'Prioritize my inbox'. This produces a neat summary of what's awaiting you in your inbox, so you don't have to wade through unhelpful preview versions of the start of emails or a lot of text. Word is getting new suggested prompts to help you get started with documents. Copilot in OneDrive enables you to use it to reason over your Drive, so it can gain insights on, summarize and compare up to five different files. Finally, in Teams, Copilot will now be able to analyze the group chat in any answers it gives you. One brand-new feature to look out for is Copilot Agents. These are AI assistants that are designed to automate business processes. You can create an agent from any site, library, or folder, and it will be able to use Copilot's reasoning power over those files. You can even add your agents to your department's Teams chat, and @mention them, too, and they'll respond just like a human team member. You can talk to Agents as you would a trusted colleague, and your data never leaves the Microsoft 365 trust boundary. For Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, the new Business Chat and Pages features are rolling out now, although Microsoft does add the caveat that Pages "will be generally available later this month". In the coming weeks, Microsoft will be bringing Pages to the more than 400 million people who have access to the free version of Copilot when they're signed in via a Microsoft Entra Account. You can start using Business Chat today at Microsoft365.com/Copilot. The other new features in the Microsoft 365 apps will start appearing in the public previews later this month.

Microsoft pushes further into generative AI with Copilot Agents -- here's what they can do

Microsoft isn't necessarily the first name you think of for generative AI, but the company is steadily pushing into the space. Between its Copilot+ branded laptops and Office's Copilot features, the AI offerings from the company are pretty solid. And they just got better, with Microsoft updating its generative AI features to include automated agents, new features for its Copilot assistants and a new collaborative tool, as reported by Axios. The most significant change coming to Microsoft's generative AI tools is called Copilot Pages. Essentially, these are documents within the BizChat app that lets workers use AI tools collaboratively, just like they would a traditional document. Microsoft described them as "a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multiplayer AI collaboration. It's the first new digital artifact for the AI age." Copilot Pages are all about taking ephemeral AI-generated content and making it stick around, with options to edit it, add to it and share it with others. The next part of Microsoft's new AI wave comes with improvements to Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps. It's expanding AI features to Microsoft Excel for data analysis, PowerPoint for AI-generated storytelling and Outlook for better inbox management. Microsoft says it's "taking everything we're learning from our customers and using it to make Copilot even better." Microsoft cites using Copilot to conduct advanced data analysis, which would be difficult without extensive knowledge and experience. Tasks like forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning, and visualizing complex data can be done using natural language instead of complicated coding. Another example is Prioritize my inbox, which uses AI to help you focus on messages that matter most. It can also summarize emails to help you reach the point more quickly. Finally, Microsoft is introducing Copilot agents, designed to make automating and executing business processes on your behalf easier and faster through AI automation. According to Microsoft, these are "AI assistants designed to automate and execute business processes, working with or for humans." They can be simple agents that respond to prompts and more complicated ones that can function autonomously. These agents are almost like another team member -- at least, that's how Microsoft wants you to think of them. The company cites the ability to @ mention the agent as you would any other teammate to ask questions and get real-time answers. You can use an agent as a knowledge resource for your team, allowing them to ask about different policies or workflows without going to their manager, which can save time. As far as making these custom agents, Microsoft is introducing agent builder, which it says is simplified and powered by Copilot Studio. Of course, it depends on how reluctant businesses are to turn essential functions over to AI instead of humans whether this becomes popular. The Agents sound beneficial; however, automated agents running in the background sound a bit intimidating for businesses who are just starting to dip their toes into generative AI. Either way, this is a long-term push for Microsoft and the company says to expect more "in the next two months." It says it'll share "more about how Copilot is supercharging productivity and accelerating business value for every customer."

Microsoft unveils 'multiplayer AI collaboration' tool for work, trying to overcome Copilot qualms

Microsoft is aiming to address skepticism about the value of AI in its flagship productivity applications -- and justify the premium price for business users -- with a new wave of features for Microsoft 365 Copilot. The company on Monday introduced a new feature called Copilot Pages that lets multiple users collaborate on a persistent shared page, verifying and pulling in content and insights that they've found and generated on their own with help from an AI chatbot. "This is an entirely new work pattern -- multiplayer, human to AI to human collaboration," said Jared Spataro, Microsoft's AI at Work corporate vice president, in a post announcing the new feature. It's part of a wave of new AI features released and previewed Monday morning for Microsoft 365 programs including Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook. The announcements come amid reports that some business customers aren't yet finding Microsoft's AI features for business worth the extra $30/user per month. AI is sparking a competitive frenzy in business and productivity applications, with startups and tech giants seeing an opportunity to reset a market segment that Microsoft has historically defined. Some of those rivals are getting increasingly pointed with their jabs. "So many customers are so disappointed in what they bought from Microsoft Copilots because they're not getting the accuracy and the response that they want," said Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO, during the company's Aug. 28 earnings call. "Microsoft has disappointed so many customers with AI." Office apps and related services, sold under Microsoft 365 umbrella, remain stalwarts of the company's business, generating nearly $55 billion or more than 22% of Microsoft's overall revenue annually. In its announcement Monday morning, Microsoft said total Copilot customers grew more than 60% quarter over quarter, and the number of people who use Copilot at work doubled over the same time period. As an example of the growth, Microsoft said telecom giant Vodafone signed on to use the technology for 68,000 employees. However, Microsoft so far has seen more AI traction in other areas, such as GitHub Copilot, which accounted for more than 40% of GitHub's revenue in Microsoft's most recent fiscal year; and the Azure OpenAI service, largely responsible for the six points that AI added to the overall 30% growth of Microsoft's cloud platform last year. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella joined Spataro on Monday morning for a virtual announcement of the new AI features, which the company has dubbed "Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2." The company released the first Microsoft 365 Copilot wave nearly a year ago, in November 2023.

Microsoft 365's new Pages feature makes Copilot crucial for teams

Unlike a lot of the newer features, Pages is one that you won't necessarily need a Copilot Pro subscription for. Today, Microsoft is announcing "Wave 2" of its Microsoft 365 Copilot AI innovation, which is geared towards users who are paying for a Microsoft 365 Copilot Pro subscription. But one feature, known as Pages, may be available to business customers who use Copilot without a subscription. The subtext of Pages -- and the overall theme of the new Copilot wave in general -- is that Copilot's AI contributions matter. Normally, any advice provided by Copilot remains within Copilot and only for a short time. Microsoft characterizes Copilot's output as "ephemeral," signifying something that eventually passes over. But the new Pages feature treats Copilot's insights as equal to something that you or your coworkers themselves might have authored, saving Copilot's output on a "page" to be worked on with your colleagues. Pages will initially be available to users who subscribe to Microsoft 365 and have a Microsoft 365 Copilot Pro subscription, which is a $20-per-month add-on. But in the coming weeks, Pages will also be added to Entra accounts. (Entra is Microsoft's corporate identity solution, which your employer may or may not use.) Entra accounts won't require a Copilot for Microsoft 365 subscription to use Pages. The goal, of course, is to sell more of these Copilot for Microsoft 365 subscriptions. But Microsoft is also trying to make Copilot itself stickier and more appealing. The company cited customer testimonials that say Copilot saved them several hours per week. Microsoft is also adding additional features to its Microsoft 365 apps, including Excel, Word, and PowerPoint. Copilot in Excel: Copilot in Excel is now generally available. The key addition is Copilot in Excel with Python, which means you'll be able to "write" Python functions for Excel using a Copilot prompt. Copilot for Excel now also supports XLOOKUP and SUMIF, conditional formatting, and the ability to iterate with Copilot on visualizations like charts and PivotTables, Microsoft said. Copilot in PowerPoint: Narrative Builder is the latest feature within Copilot for PowerPoint, helping to come up with a "draft" presentation and then refine it until you're satisfied with your product. Soon Copilot will also be able to add images from your SharePoint library and create approved branded presentations. Copilot in Teams: Later this month, Copilot will be able to summarize both Teams meetings and related chats in meetings, so that the official stuff and the backchannel explanations are summed up. Copilot in Outlook: Although Outlook already has Focused Inbox, a new Prioritize My Inbox feature will pull out your most important emails based on the contents of emails and relationships of senders to you. A summary email sums up those emails and explains why they're important. Copilot in Word: "Coming later this month, Copilot in Word will enable you to quickly reference not only web data and work data like Word, PowerPoint, PDFs, and encrypted documents, but also emails and meetings," Microsoft said. Microsoft recently added suggested prompts, which are generally available. Copilot in OneDrive: Later this month, Copilot for OneDrive will allow you to compare up to five files and provide "insights" into the others. Microsoft is also announcing Agent Builder, the ability to create agents with Copilot Studio. These agents, now available, can automate business processes, ranging from simple prompt-and-response agents to "more advanced, fully autonomous agents," said Microsoft. One of the example agents is a Visual Creator agent, which creates AI images, designs, and soon videos.

Microsoft is expanding its generative AI suite

Why it matters: The move comes amid a push toward automated agents and question marks around just how valuable generative AI assistants are for business workers outside of a few key roles. Driving the news: Microsoft is adding a new type of document -- called Copilot Pages -- that lives within its BizChat app and allows workers to use AI tools collaboratively. The big picture: Microsoft's announcement comes as other business software makers are evolving their AI strategies, including Salesforce which last week announced its big push around agents. What's next: Microsoft said it isn't done announcing new features for businesses.

Microsoft 365's new Copilot features prove boring AI is actually the best AI

Microsoft just gave Microsoft 365 a major Copilot upgrade, adding new generative AI features to your most-used work apps like PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. While new Excel features aren't as flashy as other Copilot feats like Cocreate with Microsoft Paint or Live Captions features, Copilot in Microsoft 365 is getting one major thing right: it's useful, right here, right now, and that's exactly why they could be the best AI features we've seen all year. In case you haven't noticed, there's lots happening with AI right now. Every new laptop; every new smartphone and watch; every new processor and graphics chip is incorporating AI in some way. And while lots of those applications might look cool -- watching a computer turn you into a superhero or generate NPC dialogue in a video game are wild examples of AI's capabilities -- much of that tech is still in the process of finding a real application in our day-to-day lives. It's fun to imagine what nascent AI will do in the future, but in the meantime, we've got emails to answer and projects to manage. That's why Microsoft wants to use Copilot to build your next PowerPoint presentation. Today, Microsoft showed off its next phase for Copilot in Microsoft 365, which includes new ways to generate PowerPoints from scratch, generative coding in Excel, a sandbox feature called Pages that lets you collaborate with your team using AI in real-time, plus much, much more. By most estimations, those AI features are solutions to somewhat banal problems, but that's kind of the point. Sometimes being boring is the best way to make an impact. Don't get me wrong, there's an art to a great PowerPoint slide deck, but it's an art that not everyone wants to learn -- I'd happily offload that task to Copilot. Similarly, my email is constantly bursting with pitches, company-wide announcements, and spam. While an email assistant isn't quite the singularity imagined by sci-fi, an AI that can prioritize email for me, so I can spend less time managing my inbox and more time doing other more important work, is enticing to say the least. If you're snoring while reading this, that's kind of the point -- Microsoft 365's Copilot aren't sexy, but they're making a run at being really, really, useful. While Microsoft made a lot of promises about what its Copilot-powered 365 apps can do, Large Language Models (LLM) like ChatGPT which powers Copilot are still a work in progress. For one, LLMs are still prone to errors, or "hallucinations." That means you can't always trust everything they tell you. That issue is compounded when generative AI is being used in a work setting where the stakes are much higher than casually generating an image for some friends. Whether people will be comfortable letting Copilot read their emails, generate work presentations, or write code, will be fully dependent on whether their experience is a positive one. If Copilot features feel like more work or even the same amount of work, the case for Copilot falls apart. As it stands, generative AI is decent with text generation and sorting emails, but it's still best to use AI as a supplementary tool rather than a full solution. It'll be up to Microsoft to prove Copilot is ready for primetime and convince people to hand over the proverbial keys. And if it's not ready, the results could be pretty damning. After all, no one wants to get fired over an AI hallucination.