Microsoft announced at its Build conference on Tuesday that its artificial intelligence assistant Microsoft 365 Copilot will support plug-ins, adding new features to the assistant, which is integrated into the Microsoft 365 productivity software suite, to meet the specific needs of users.
In a blog post, Microsoft Executive Vice President Rajesh Jha described three types of Microsoft 365 Copilot plug-ins that will be available: plug-ins that leverage OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology, Teams messaging extensions, and Power Platform connectors. The sneak preview program will launch with more than 50 plug-ins, including products from Atlassian and Adobe. When the plug-ins are officially launched, Microsoft says there will be thousands available.
This is Microsoft’s latest move to make its AI tools more flexible and more relevant to more people, and could be an important way for the company to differentiate itself from its competitors. Google also has its own productivity-focused AI tool called Duet AI, but it’s not yet widely available and doesn’t support plug-ins. 365 Copilot isn’t the only app that supports plug-ins. Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that plug-ins will appear in Bing AI chat, and OpenAI recently added support for plug-ins to ChatGPT, and these will support interoperability.
