Microsoft is bringing ChatGPT technology to Word, Excel and Outlook

 Microsoft on Thursday outlined its plans to bring artificial intelligence to its most recognizable productivity tools, including Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel and Word, with the promise of changing how millions do their work every day.

The company announced at an event on Thursday that Microsoft 365 users will soon be able to use an AI "Co-pilot," which will assist with editing, summarizing, creating, and comparing documents. However, do not call it Clippy. Compared to its wide-eyed, paperclip-shaped predecessor, the new features, which are built on the same technology as ChatGPT, are significantly more powerful and less anthropomorphic.

Users will be able to rapidly draft suggested responses to lengthy email threads, request the creation of a specific chart in Excel, and convert a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation with the help of the new features.

Microsoft is also introducing the idea of "Business Chat," which is basically an agent that works alongside the user while attempting to comprehend and make sense of their Microsoft 365 data. According to the business, the agent will be aware of what is in a user's email and what is scheduled for that day on their calendar in addition to the documents they have been working on, the presentations they have been making, the people they are meeting with, and the chats that are currently taking place on their Teams platform. Then, users can ask Business Chat to perform duties like compile a status report from all of the documents on various platforms pertaining to a specific project and then create an email that could be sent to their team as an update.

The news from Microsoft comes a month after it added comparable AI-powered features to Bing and in the midst of a new arms race in the tech sector to create and implement AI tools that have the potential to transform the way people work, shop, and create. Competitor Google revealed earlier this week that it will also add AI to its work applications, including Gmail, Sheets, and Docs.

The announcement also comes two days after OpenAI, the organization that developed ChatGPT and is the source of Microsoft's artificial intelligence technology, revealed GPT-4, its most recent model. The update's capacity to draft lawsuits, pass standardized tests, and create a functioning website from a hand-drawn sketch astounded many users in early tests and a business demo.

OpenAI claimed it improved the tool's objectivity and added more "guardrails" to keep discussions on course. However, the update and the efforts made by bigger tech companies to incorporate this technology could raise more difficult issues regarding how AI tools can alter occupations, make it possible for students to cheat, and change how we interact with technology. For better or worse, GPT-4 has already been implemented in Microsoft's new Bing browser.

A Microsoft representative advised 365 customers using the new AI tools to be aware that the technology is still being developed and that information will need to be verified twice. Though OpenAI has significantly improved its most recent model, GPT-4 still has the same restrictions as earlier iterations. The company said it can still make "simple reasoning errors" or be "overly gullible in accepting obvious false statements from a user," and does not fact check.

However, Microsoft is confident that the adjustments will significantly enhance people's experiences at work by enabling them to complete duties more quickly and easily, freeing them up to be more analytical and inventive.