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Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 event Highlights: Microsoft unveiled a handful of new AI features such as Copilot Pages and autonomous AI agents as part of Copilot Wave 2 that was launched for businesses on Monday, September 16. The new Pages feature in Copilot Bizchat uses AI to pull insights from your work data and add them to an editable document that can be accessed by anyone with a shareable link.
Meanwhile, Copilot agents will serve as virtual AI assistants that can be used to automate a series of tasks or monitor your inbox for email on its own. The Redmond-based tech giant also unveiled new updates coming to Copilot for Microsoft 365 apps such as Narrative Builder in Powerpoint, Copilot in Excel with Python, email inbox prioritisation, and more.
The virtual only event was hosted by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Jared Spataro, the company’s vice president of AI at work. It was live streamed on LinkedIn as well as on Microsoft’s official website.
Thanks for following along with our liveblog. Catch all the latest news on Microsoft's AI assistant at indianexpress.com. We'll see you at the next one.
Based on customer feedback, Microsoft said that it is expanding the reach of its generative AI assistant to all its applications with Copilot Wave 2. Some of the new features that are coming to the suite of 365 apps are:
- Copilot in Excel: Uses AI for generating formulas, data visualization, conditional formatting, and more.
- Copilot in Excel with Python: Uses AI to leverage Python in Excel in order to output advanced analysis, such as forecasting and risk analysis, without the user having to write any code.
- Narrative Builder in PowerPoint: Produces an outline of a presentation draft based on a single prompt in minutes
- Copilot in Teams: The new update here is that Copilot will be able to create summaries of Teams meetings based on the actual meeting as well as conversations in the chat.
- Copilot in Outlook: Has a new ‘Prioritize my inbox’ feature that analyses and flags the most important emails in a user’s inbox while also summarising the emails.
- Copilot in Word: New ‘on-canvas start experience’ allows users to collaborate with Copilot inline on sections of their document.
- Copilot in OneDrive: Users can quickly leverage the AI assistant to find files in their OneDrive repository, generate summaries of these filed, and compare them with each other – all without the user having to open any of the OneDrive files.
Here's a list of everything that was announced at Microsoft's 'Wave 2' event on Monday:
- Copilot Pages
- Copilot in Excel
- Copilot in Excel with Python
- Narrative Builder in Powerpoint
- Prioritise my inbox feature in Outlook
- On-canvas start experience for Copilot in Word
- Copilot in OneDrive
- Copilot agents
Microsoft has unveiled Copilot agents which are like AI virtual assistants that can carry out specific tasks with little human intervention. Some agents can perform fully autonomously while others are "prompt-and-response" agents, according to the company. Customised Copilot agents can also be developed by users through Microsoft's new agent builder feature that is powered by Copilot Studio. To summon these agents on any of Microsoft's 365 apps, users just need to type '@'. Microsoft says that Copilot agents and agent builder will be rolled out to all customers in the coming few weeks.
Copilot can help you prioritise your inbox, and you can sort by priority based on the AI chatbot's analysis. You can teach Copilot which emails are top priority, designed to help you not miss what is important. Copilot in Outlook can suggest email responses and you can ask what it needs to be add.
With Copilot in OneDrive, users can quickly leverage the AI assistant to find files in their OneDrive repository, generate summaries of these filed, and compare them with each other - all without the user having to open any of the OneDrive files. Copilot in OneDrive is rolling out to all subscribers starting today, as per the company.
Microsoft says that its new Narrative Builder feature looks to give users more control in making slide decks using Copilot. It can add speaker notes, add animations, and add slide transitions.
The new Copilot Pages feature looks to enable "multiplayer AI collaboration" by letting users pull up responses from the Copilot chatbot into a new page and editing these responses collaboratively with others. “You and your team can work collaboratively in a page with Copilot, seeing everyone’s work in real time and iterating with Copilot like a partner, adding more content from your data, files, and the web to your Page,” says Jared Spataro. “This is an entirely new work pattern — multiplayer, human to AI to human collaboration.”
Copilot responses are 2x times faster, it has the world's best feedback loop. Copilot will also be powered by OpenAI's new o1 model, says Microsoft VP Jared Spataro.
The Microsoft 365 Copilot: Wave 2 is set to begin shortly. There's 5,000+ users on the LinkedIn live stream.
We’re just minutes away from Microsoft’s special event that is expected to focus on the future of AI at work. Accordingly, it is likely that Microsoft will announce that it is bringing more Copilot features to its productivity apps. What kind of AI capabilities will we see? Will it include features such as Sound Like Me, that purportedly lets Copilot write emails closer to your style of writing? Will we hear more about the controversial Windows Recall feature? We’ll just have to wait and watch.
In March 2024, the Redmond-based tech giant hosted the 'Future of Work' event which saw the launch of Copilot for Microsoft 365. Bringing the generative AI assistant to the entire suite of 365 apps means that PowerPoint users are able to turn their ideas and concepts into a sharp presentation with simple commands in natural language. And in Excel, Copilot helps users unlock data insights, identify trends, and create professional-looking data visualisations. The company had also unveiled its Business Chat feature that works across all Microsoft 365 apps.
We're just half an hour away from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella kicking off the 'Wave 2' event which promises to unveil the "next phase of Copilot innovations". What does Microsoft have cooking in its AI oven? Stay tuned.
Five years after making its first billion-dollar investment in OpenAI, Microsoft officially recognised the startup behind ChatGPT as one of its contenders last month. This perhaps marks an important turning point in the relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft that seems to have evolved from strategic partners to competitors. Reports also suggest that the Satya Nadella-led firm is training a new, in-house AI language model large enough to compete with those from Alphabet’s Google and OpenAI.
From large companies to educational institutions, Microsoft has been gradually expanding access to Copilot since November last year. The company’s flagship generative AI assistant is powered by OpenAI’s large language models (LLMs). Earlier this year, Microsoft launched generative AI features called Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service to help businesses improve their sales and customer service.
The rumour mill is in full turn ahead of Microsoft’s ‘Wave 2’ event on Monday. Most of the buzz is around the possibility of Copilot being rebranded to further drive subscriptions and distinguish it from Copilot Pro, the consumer version of the company’s flagship AI assistant.
However, it looks like Copilot may not get a totally different name. Instead, the company may simply attach Microsoft 365 as a prefix to Copilot which means that Copilot for Sales could become Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales, Copilot in Word could become Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word, so on and so forth.
Stay tuned to know more on what are the other expected changes coming to Microsoft Copilot products.
Microsoft’s GPT-powered Copilot is accessible on Windows 11. The Redmond-based tech giant also launched a free Copilot app for both Android and iOS. Here are a few AI features of Copilot that you may have missed:
- Copilot Notebook for longer text prompts
- Talk to Copilot
- Image search capabilities
- Free AI image generation powered by OpenAI’s DALL-E 3
- Add plugins to Copilot
Even before the infamous Microsoft-Crowdstrike IT outage, issues that appeared to be linked to Bing’s API had prevented users from accessing the search capabilities of Copilot for a few hours in May this year. The outage had also affected ChatGPT, DuckDuckGo, and other platforms.
Microsoft's widely anticipated Windows AI features are expected to be rolled out to some AMD and Intel laptops in November this year, according to a report by The Verge. So far, only new Qualcomm-powered devices have received the Copilot Plus PC updates. These upcoming new AI features could reportedly include Auto Super Resolution, which uses AI to boost frame rates in video games, as well as Cocreator and Studio Effects.
Microsoft has been constantly adding new AI features into Microsoft 365 since Copilot’s integration with the productivity suite in 2023. Some of the AI capabilities announced this year, so far, include:
- Copilot for Microsoft Word
- Copilot for Outlook
- AI-powered Copilot agents for businesses
- Team Copilot feature
- Copilot for Sales
- Copilot for Service
In November 2023, Microsoft made Copilot features available on its Office suite of apps for businesses at a $30 subscription. Two months later, the tech giant launched Copilot Pro which sought to unlock the same AI features in Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc, for consumers willing to pay $20.
The software maker is expected to announce a bunch of new AI features for Copilot in Microsoft 365, as part of its efforts to push the AI offering among its business clients. Microsoft is also expected to unveil the latest developments related to Copilot Pro, its AI subscription for consumers. The event could also see Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announce a new name for Copilot to align with its focus on the business side of AI.
