The best Microsoft Office apps are getting a major AI upgrade: PowerPoint, Outlook, and even Teams are getting a Copilot boost

By James On Sep 18, 2024

Despite our protests, Microsoft is committed to making AI tools in the workplace accessible and engaging with a series of new enhancements to its Microsoft 365 platform. (M365) suite of productivity tools.

In a announcement On the M365 blog, the tech giant announced “wave 2,” rolling out (mostly) in September 2024, featuring Copilot Pages, “a dynamic, persistent canvas” for AI-driven collaboration. It also announced that Copilot would be getting expanded functionality in a number of key applications, such as data analysis in Excel and inbox management in Outlook.

While the company emphasizing the importance of its AI tool for small to mid-sized businesses that may need to manage costs, it also wants to emphasize that Business Chat (or “BizChat,” as it persistently calls it), the content-aware part of Copilot, requires a subscription. The standard Copilot chat is free, but only searches the web.

(Image credit: Microsoft)

The Net Positives of “Wave 2”

It seems like the integration of business content into AI-generated content has been around for a while, but Microsoft claims that wave 2 will bring “reasoning” to Copilot Business Chat, allowing it to make more contextual decisions and answer more contextual questions. With Microsoft Teams, for example, “you can ask Copilot if there were any questions you missed in a meeting, and it will quickly scan what was said and what was typed in the chat to see if anything was left unanswered.”

So, Copilot Business Chat is now better, in vaguely small ways. It can tap into more business-specific data, while Word specifically now supports quick reviews of everything in-app, as well as additional writing prompts from the blank page.

Microsoft also says that “dynamic storytelling” is now available in PowerPoint, helping users build a structure for their presentations. It will also use corporate branding to keep business presentations stylish and on-brand. It also claims that Copilot will “soon” be able to pull from “approved” images in Sharepoint libraries.

Copilot makes the scourge of customer service, AI chatbots, easier to create and can be tailored to specific “business processes” to “work with or for people.” An agent builder in Business Chat will be generally available “in the coming weeks” to facilitate this, the company said.

Microsoft Excel may be getting the most interesting development, though it’s still only in public preview for now, as its natural language prompts are being powered by the Python programming language to make advanced data analysis as easy as possible. Microsoft promises to enable advanced data analysis, “(without) any coding required.”

The Copilot Pages interface

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Copilot Business Chat, marketing language and you

However, there are BizChat deniers within Microsoft’s cell who are resistant to the idea that it even exists. User HalSclater on Microsoft’s Small and Medium business blog writes: “BizChat?? Suddenly this is everywhere and yet it’s not a product. Please stop it!”

Microsoft should hire him to write their copy, because “BizChat” isn’t the only bit of heavy marketing Microsoft is doing about this. The concrete one here appears to be Copilot Pages, which places “ephemeral AI-generated content” in a collaborative editing space.

Please ignore that the insistence on calling this concept “multiplayer” and “a completely new way of working” is rather outrageous, given what Google plans to do with the implementation of its Gemini AI in Google Workspace. And it’s not just “a dynamic persistent canvas,” but one “designed for multiplayer AI collaboration,” even going so far as to say that “it’s the first new digital artifact for the AI era.” The harried copywriter out there who just shamelessly associates words and expects them to mean things has my undying respect, but at the same time, “please stop!”