After new Bing, Microsoft to demo OpenAI-powered Word, PowerPoint, Outlook

The OpenAI tech integration into Microsoft productivity apps could help users generate text and summarise the content of documents.

The AI war is heating up with Google and Microsoft trying to one up each other (Image: Reuters)

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After demonstrating its Prometheus AI model in its new Bing search engine on Tuesday, Microsoft is now preparing to integrate the same into its productivity apps which include Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

The company is planning an announcement in March to highlight how quickly it’ll reinvent its search and productivity apps fuelled by its OpenAI investments, according to a report by The Verge which has quoted sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans.

Microsoft’s plans to integrate OpenAI’s technology into its office software first came to fore back in January via a report by The Information. The report suggested that Microsoft 365 subscribers may be able to use the software to generate text with simple prompts, assisting users to perform tasks more efficiently.

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While details about the functions the AI integration will enable are scarce, OpenAI’s tech could help users write more accurately by suggesting alternative words and phrases as they type.

Microsoft Teams recently gained an OpenAI-powered Premium tier that introduced a feature called Intelligent Recap. The feature generates meeting notes, recommends tasks, and generates highlights to help you extract the key points from a meeting. A similar implementation on Microsoft Office apps could be on the way to help you summarise long documents and highlight important bits. Meanwhile, in Outlook, OpenAI tech could write replies or summarise email threads for you.

The new Microsoft Edge includes a Bing sidebar integration that technically lets you use the Prometheus model on Office’s web apps. It gives an early look at what to expect from the Prometheus integration, letting users compose text and summarise the contents of the currently loaded page.

Microsoft has currently locked horns with Google, with both companies trying to gain an edge over each other in terms of AI power. With Microsoft pouring billions into OpenAI and announcing language model integrations into its products back to back, the company is challenging Google’s monopoly for the first time. Google isn’t sitting still and recently responded by demonstrating its new artificial intelligence chatbot, Bard, although it didn’t pan out the way the company that hoped.