Microsoft announced that it will enhance the Office office suite through generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology. In the process of commercializing AI technology, the technology giants are fiercely competing.
Microsoft showed off its AI tool Copilot, which can be used in software such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint in the Office suite. Microsoft said the new tools will help business customers write documents faster, generate artwork, and create diagrams, saving millions of employees a lot of time.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, said: “The next generation of AI technology will start a new wave of productivity improvements, and the powerful Copilot will remove the drudgery from our daily tasks and work.”
This week, Microsoft-invested OpenAI released a new generation of AI model GPT-4. Microsoft has already integrated this new model into the Bing search engine.
Microsoft and OpenAI have been working together for 3 years. OpenAI has developed a generative AI tool ChatGPT, based on a large language model, to respond to users in a way that mimics human language. Since its launch in November last year, ChatGPT has attracted 100 million users within 3 months.
Microsoft said the new features for Office will be rolled out “in the coming months” and is currently being tested with a number of businesses, but gave no further details.
This week, Google also announced enhancements to its Google Workplace office suite with AI technology. Google showed how the new tool can compose emails based on a small amount of input, and adopt a sombre or whimsical tone depending on the user’s needs.
Microsoft has previously launched an AI-enhanced version of the Bing search engine based on OpenAI’s GPT technology, which is currently being tested with a small number of users.
Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365 marketing, acknowledged that Copilot tools can go wrong, but he emphasized that AI tools are only designed to assist users, not replace them.
“Sometimes Copilot is right, but other times it’s usefully wrong: giving you an imperfect idea from which you can start building,” he said.
Credit Suisse estimates that if 10% of Microsoft’s 370 million commercial Office 365 users are upgraded to an AI-enhanced version, it will generate $14.9 billion (currently about 102.81 billion CNY) in revenue over the next five years. Credit Suisse said that assuming that Microsoft also charges a higher fee for the simplified version of the new features, it can generate an additional US$18.7 billion (currently about 129.03 billion CNY) in revenue.
Microsoft said there would be “a premium” on pricing for the Copilot suite of products, but the details were not discussed during the half-hour presentation, which instead focused on everyday use cases for businesses and users.
