Copilot, the company’s application of generative AI, will soon be available for Windows and Office 365, according to a recent announcement from Microsoft. Although Microsoft already uses generative AI in its Bing search engine, the addition of this technology to Microsoft’s core productivity products has the potential to completely change how we use technology at home and at work.
This is unquestionably a game-changing play, but it also leaves the impression of a squandered opportunity.
What Microsoft is doing might have been much more with the powers of generative AI, especially in interaction. It may have been absolutely great, surpassing current speech assistants like Apple’s Siri, Google Assistant, and Amazon Alexa. Just a little bit sad.
This week, let’s examine generative AI on the desktop. To end, I’ll highlight my Product of the Week, a brand-new Surface laptop from Microsoft that is undoubtedly one of the greatest ever designed for artists.
Everything is Generating AI
When Microsoft added ChatGPT generative AI to Bing, it warned rivals like Google and Amazon. Although there have been some growing pains, Bing today makes it easier to find the information you need if you know what you’re doing (more on that later). However, Copilot offers much more when used with Microsoft’s operating system, productivity, and communication solutions.
What if you could describe a presentation to your computer, and it would subsequently produce it as if it were your personal assistant? Imagine having your computer take care of the grammar and spelling corrections after you prepare the outline for a book, article, or paper. Imagine being able to ask Excel a question about the financial report you are viewing, and receiving an almost immediate and comprehensive response from the program.
Microsoft’s Copilot generative AI capability envisions a world like that. You give the instructions. The finished product will be produced by it. The enterprise release of all of this, which will cost about $30 per month per user, will launch on November 1 after being made available to beta testers since August.
Training Materials for Using AI and Microsoft Copilot Effectively
You will need some basic training because using these capabilities properly requires a background in Boolean reasoning, much like efficiently using the web. Fortunately, there are tools at your disposal for getting caught up:
If you wish to use this new toolkit effectively, take advantage of Microsoft’s free 30-minute introductory course.
Although Koenig also offers a certification program, it is primarily geared toward those who wish to program AI rather than casual users.
Microsoft WorkLab is a further resource for learning about this technology. Here, you can get in-depth articles on how to utilize it to boost productivity and do away with many of the tedious tasks that are a part of many of our occupations.
Learning how to interact with AI in ways that will guarantee the best outcome is a key component of this, since you don’t want to break the tool while it’s getting to know you. This final point is crucial since, in the future, AI is probably going to play a bigger role in your profession. If you damage it, you risk lowering the quality of your production and having your work reflect adversely on you as a result.
The Depressing Part: Cortana
We will soon be able to communicate with this tool as though it were a different person as generative acquires its voice.
I’ve played around with older iterations, and I found it intriguing and appealing. What is particularly tragic is that Microsoft foresaw this potential decades in advance with Cortana, the ideal entry point to this technology that was derived from Microsoft’s Halo video game.
Even the attempt to build a totally holographic Cortana was abandoned in favor of one that interacted with augmented reality to offer users an even more engaging experience. They were getting close to the Cortana encounter from the game.
More than a year ago, Nvidia demonstrated technology that would bridge the final gap and make Cortana a reality in the following generation of automobiles.
What impact would this have on digital assistants, in your opinion? A computer entity can seem as anything, so you might alter Cortana’s name, appearance, and gender as needed.
Microsoft’s Copilot Journey: Will a Third Attempt Be Lucky?
Microsoft’s third attempt to perfect digital assistants is called Copilot.
Microsoft Bob, which was released in 1995 and was misrepresented as a substitute for the graphical user interface (GUI), was the first venture. To be clear, while a voice interface might ultimately take the place of the GUI, the necessary technology wasn’t present in the 1990s.
Cortana came next. However, we wanted the feature on a standalone device or smartphone, not in a PC, and Microsoft just didn’t seem driven to make that happen. At first, it was on par with or even better than Siri or Google Assistant.
I regret not obtaining Cortana instead of Copilot since she would have been a far more entertaining and futuristic digital assistant.
A Conclusion
A game-changer will be desktop generative AI. Yes, there will be a learning curve as we become used to appropriately giving our PCs orders, and I anticipate many of us will initially have trouble speaking to our computers.
The two parts will develop together as we learn more about these new AI capabilities and they learn more about us. Kids will learn this faster and be able to apply these skills sooner than adults, as is almost always the case.
In the end, this is a significant step toward our AI future, when we interact with computing technology more and it starts to understand us more quickly than we can.
There is currently a contest to determine who can perfect AI first. Even though Microsoft has taken the lead, the race to give AI a personality and more human-like effectiveness in interaction is still open. Whoever does it will probably either become the next great technology power or be bought out by them (Amazon is also making significant progress in this area).
