By Dina Bass and Matt Day
Microsoft Corp. said Vodafone Group Plc has signed a major deal to bring artificial intelligence assistants to Office and unveiled a suite of new AI tools designed to help workers create Excel charts, prioritize emails and collaborate with each other.
Vodafone will buy 68,000 licenses for business versions of the assistants, known as Copilots, after early tests showed workers using them save about three hours per week per person, Microsoft said in a blog post shared ahead of a webcast Monday. Other customers include Honeywell International Inc. and financial services provider Finastra Group Holdings Ltd. Microsoft said the number of Copilot customers grew more than 60 percent in the most recent quarter compared with the previous period, while the number of customers with more than 10,000 users doubled. The company did not disclose overall customer totals.
Microsoft has expanded its product line with AI technology from partner OpenAI, pitching the new features as a second wave of business-focused Copilots, AI tools designed to supercharge programs like Teams conferencing software, Word and Outlook, and other applications.
By connecting popular Office software to AI models from OpenAI, Microsoft products could differentiate themselves from competing offerings, including those from OpenAI itself. OpenAI last week released a new model, called o1, that can perform some human-like reasoning tasks, and Microsoft said Monday that it would eventually integrate the technology into its own products.
Microsoft has cited strong demand for the earlier versions of the products, with customers praising some of their capabilities, particularly the ability to summarize meetings and documents. The Copilots cost $30 per month per user and could one day become a significant new revenue stream.
But many features are still in development: Generating new content is less reliable, and so is using AI tools for things like spreadsheets or tasks that require contextual understanding. In recent months, nervous investors have expressed impatience with tech companies’ attempts to profit from their massive investments in AI.
Microsoft is also rolling out a new feature to Copilot’s chat application, called Pages, that gives colleagues a space to collaborate using data they create and content generated by its AI software. Pages stores the AI-generated material in one place and lets employees edit and share it with other employees. The new feature launches Monday and will be generally available later this month. “You can generate ideas with AI and collaborate with other people,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.
Microsoft is also widely releasing its Copilot tools for the Excel spreadsheet app, which help users create charts and pivot tables. The Excel Copilot can also work with text data and use the Python programming language for things like forecasting and risk analysis. The Python functions, now in preview, can be accessed using plain language instead of programming code.
The software giant announced new AI features coming to Word, Teams and PowerPoint. A new Prioritize My Inbox option in Outlook analyzes a user’s messages based on which emails they respond to and who they check in with at the office to help tidy up. The program, which will be available in preview later this year, will also summarize the messages and explain why they were prioritized.
First publication: Sep 17, 2024 | 12:03 AM IST