Shin Ji Won reports
Editor: Editorial Office
The AI desktop revolution began late at night, and GPT-4 was fully connected to Microsoft Office Family Bucket, which is bound to subvert human office!
The war of the big factories in Silicon Valley has entered a white-hot stage.
As soon as Google's front foot announced the integration of AI tools into Workspace, Microsoft's back foot hurriedly held a press conference, and people did not say much about the office software king bomb - Microsoft 365 Copilot, once again blinding the world.
From now on, whether it is Word, PPT, Excel, or Outlook, Teams, Microsoft Viva, Power Platform, all these office software, all will be blessed by GPT-4!
In other words, with Copilot, we can easily play with AI tools with the most versatile interface and natural language.
Microsoft CEO Nadella said that today is a milestone, which means that the way we interact with computers has entered a new stage, and from then on the way we work will change forever, opening a new round of productivity explosion.
Microsoft: Is this going to save the lives of workers all over the world?
And after watching the conference of the big guy Li Zhifei concluded, too shocking, simply "cow not like Microsoft", a 48-year-old company once again rejuvenated, really unprecedented.
You can think of GPT-4!
Remember that little assistant Clippy (this is a meme that only older readers can understand), and now, GPT-4 is in the original Clippy place, the full suite of office software, it is everywhere.
And, because Copilot can be called up throughout Office, all your software is interoperable.
The Microsoft 365 Copilot system built by Microsoft makes a super combination of office software such as Word, Excel, PPT, Microsoft Graph, and GPT-4. All software is interoperable, and GPT-4 shuttles through it.
Word: Writing a thesis is done
In Word, you can ask Copilot to write articles, change text, and summarize for you.
With a brief prompt, Copilot creates a first draft and pulls in information from across the organization as needed.
It can even help you correctly grasp the tone of the article and give various suggestions, whether the tone is professional, enthusiastic, or casual, you can choose.
In addition, Copilot can improve writing, suggest ways to strengthen argumentation, or eliminate inconsistencies.
For example, with the following commands and prompts, Copilot can double the productivity of migrant workers.
Draft a two-page project proposal based on the data of "one document" and "one electronic form".
Make the third paragraph more concise. Change the tone of the document to make it more casual.
Based on this rough outline, draft a one-page draft.
At the same time, you can also call other software in Word, such as OneNote, and let it write for you based on this material.
You can even make it Excel for you based on the content of Word, and the data analysis will be done automatically for you.
PPT: Word cut slides in seconds
In the PPT, you tell it about your ideas, it will automatically make a complete set of PPT for you, and the beautiful page will automatically design for you.
If you have ready-made materials, then you just need to tap Copilot, it will generate a PPT according to the word you wrote, is it true, write yourself.
In addition, you can condense lengthy PPTs with one click, and use natural language commands to adjust layout, rearrange text, and even jam the perfect animation time.
Here are a few examples of prompts:
Create a 5-slide presentation on the basis of a Word document and include relevant picture materials.
Combine this presentation into a summary of 3 slides.
The three abstracts were reorganized into three columns, each with a picture.
Excel: The formula doesn't exist anymore
In Excel, Copilot helps you generate clear tables in seconds and handle any data processing.
Moreover, it will instantly create SWOT-based or various pivot tables based on this data.
Copilot can even help discover correlations in data, come up with hypotheses, suggest formulas based on your questions, and even generate new models.
No more learning complicated Excel usage, hit worker ecstasy!
Here are a few examples of prompts that can be tried:
Give sales breakdown by type and channel, insert a table.
Predict the impact of [a change in one variable] and generate a chart to help visualize.
Simulate how changes in [variable] growth rates will affect my gross margin.
Outlook: Good for the compilation group
In Outlook, Copilot can help you write emails, you start up, hit the bottom, it will automatically complete for you, by the way greatly polish your text.
It also automatically aggregates your email information. Even, depending on what tone of the message it writes, how many words to write.
To summarize the emails I missed while out last week, flag all the important items.
Draft a response that asks for more details on points two and three while expressing thanks; Shorten the length of this draft and use more professional expectations.
Everyone is invited to attend next Thursday at noon the "Lunch and Learn" event about the new product launch, and lunch will be provided on-site.
Teams: You don't have to bring your brain to work
In Teams, Copilot can help you summarize projects in real time and perform tasks at the same time, which greatly improves the efficiency of the entire meeting; In meetings, it will help you automatically transcribe; If you forget something, it automatically alerts you.
With Copilot, information on Teams can be synced at any time, whether it's project updates, changes in company personnel, or even which colleague has returned from vacation.
To summarize what I missed in the meeting. What points have been made so far? Where do we disagree on this topic?
Create a table of positive and negative aspects for [the topic being discussed]. What else should we consider before making a decision?
What decisions have been made and what are the recommended next steps?
And......
In the Power Platform, Copilot uses low-code tools such as Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents to allow programmers to become code farmers and develop various applications silkily.
And in Business Chat brings together all the data from words, PPT, mail, calendar, notes and contacts, chat history it helps us summarize, and email and project plan it helps us write.
To summarize the chats, emails, and files that happened last night about the [customer] escalation.
What is the next milestone [of the project], and have any risks been identified? Help me brainstorm and list some potential mitigations.
Write a new plan overview in the style of [filename A], including the schedule from [filename B], combined with the list of items in [person's] email.
The mysterious Microsoft Graph
In addition, there is a mysterious organization in this system - Microsoft Graph.
Technically, the Microsoft Graph is an API through which applications can "see" your email, calendar, files, usage patterns, and other information stored in the Microsoft cloud, such as Outlook, OneDrive, Office 365, Teams, and more.
This is valuable background information for AI generative tools.
In other words, Copilot already knows the content of the files you've been creating, the emails you've sent and received, your meeting schedules and summaries, and so on when giving advice.
Based on this, Copilot has also become an incredibly intelligent personal digital assistant, as well as a very practical content generation tool.
For example, Copilot can find trends in Excel data, generate emails based on past information, and create PowerPoint designs based on other files you've worked on.
If you want Word to write you a text based on the data on your computer, Copilot will pass this command to the Microsoft Graph, retrieve all the context and data, and then draw up a prompt to automatically send it to GPT-4.
The generated results are then passed back to the Microsoft Graph for additional compliance checks, and then the results and commands are sent back to Word.
The two factories went to war, and the workers were eliminated with one click?
I believe that all the fat friends here have long been impatient.
However, Copilot has factual errors and even other strange errors (often referred to as "hallucinations") like other AI content generators.
Microsoft emphasized that Copilot is most useful for first drafts and starting points. Although Copilot does not guarantee that every fact in the email or PowerPoint is correct, users can adjust the text, images, and formatting to ensure that the content is correct.
But we've all seen the highlights of ChatGPT's, not to mention, Microsoft was recently revealed to have fired the company's AI ethics team, which is responsible for clarifying what risks OpenAI's language models may bring to Microsoft's software.
Are Microsoft and OpenAI going too fast?
Jared Spataro, head of Microsoft 365, isn't worried, saying that in order to meet the needs of customers, Microsoft must act quickly and learn as it goes.
Regarding our concern about language model nonsense, Jared Spataro explained that prompts provided to Copilot are first filtered through the Microsoft Graph for more context.
These modified prompts are then sent to GPT-4 and filtered through the Microsoft Graph before being sent back to Microsoft 365 applications.
"We make it clear how the system makes decisions by pointing out limitations, linking to resources, and prompting users to review, verify, and adjust content based on subject matter expertise."
Microsoft's chief scientist Jamie Teevan also said: "When a system goes wrong, is biased or abused, we take appropriate mitigation measures. We are dealing with long-term repercussions and new risks like jailbreaking. Of course we make mistakes, but that's okay, when we make mistakes, we correct them immediately."
Microsoft is currently testing Copilot with 20 customers, and the "preview" will be rolled out to more customers in the coming months.
However, as for when individuals will be able to use these features, Microsoft has not yet disclosed.
Microsoft said it "will share more information on pricing and licensing soon in the future." To be clear, Copilot will be a paid add-on to the Office 365 subscription fee.
It can be seen that Google and Microsoft have recently set off another big war on AI office software.
On the same day that GPT-4 was released, Google immediately announced that it would integrate ChatGPT-like artificial intelligence into its own office "family bucket" Workspace.
Currently, Google has more than 3 billion Google Workspace users worldwide.
Office 365 is used by more than 1 million companies worldwide, with 145,844 customers using Office in the U.S. alone.
Of course, like Microsoft, Google has not opened up these features, only opened up the internal beta to a small number of people, and has not yet priced it.
After Google announced the integration of AI tools into Workspace this week, Microsoft is likely forced to temporarily advance the release of the Copilot system.
After all, after pouring another $10 billion into OpenAI in January, Microsoft clearly wanted to see huge returns soon.
It is not difficult to see that the actions of both companies are rushed. Silicon Valley giants are also starting to roll up.
And with the war between the two technology giants, Microsoft is actually almost unbearable.
According to foreign media The Information, Microsoft is now facing a GPU shortage.
It was also in the recent week that Microsoft revealed on its official website that it had spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build a supercomputer in Azure in order to develop ChatGPT and GPT-4 for OpenAI. link
Now it seems that this supercomputing sword is not just an AI chat tool, but a long-planned office software empire.
Finally, to quote a paragraph from the official website,
Human beings are born to dream, create and innovate. But today, we spend too much time consumed by heavy work, on tasks that consume our time, creativity, and energy. To reconnect the souls of our work, we need not only a better way to do the same thing, but a whole new way of working.
With Copilot, your word becomes the most powerful productivity tool on the planet.
After watching the Microsoft Copilot conference, netizens sent out a deep feeling:
"Whether to become an eliminated person or to become a boss who rebuks the way is a topic that every low-level migrant worker must face up."
Resources:
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2023/03/16/introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-your-copilot-for-work/
https://www.theverge.com/2023/3/16/23642833/microsoft-365-ai-copilot-word-outlook-teams