Microsoft (MSFT) is further integrating its AI-powered Copilot technology into its Microsoft 365 productivity products, including Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. The updates, which include the ability to use Copilot to write PowerPoint presentations and a feature that prioritizes your emails in Outlook, are part of what the tech giant is calling its Copilot Wave 2 rollout.
In addition to improvements to its Microsoft 365 apps, Microsoft also announced a new collaboration tool called Copilot Pages, which allows teams of workers to access, edit and manipulate data on a single page using information pulled from Copilot.
The company also launched a new agent creation option that allows users to easily create Copilot-based agents, AI assistants designed to automate and execute business processes.
These moves are all part of Microsoft’s broader efforts to equip its vast portfolio of enterprise software products with AI capabilities, as it seeks to leapfrog rivals in the field, ranging from Google (GOOG, GOOGLE) to Salesforce (CRM) and monetize its huge investments in AI technology.
According to Microsoft, the number of customers using Copilot has grown by more than 60% quarter over quarter, and the number of people using it daily at work has doubled. Additionally, the Windows maker says Vodafone is purchasing 68,000 Copilot licenses for its 100,000 employees after finding that the software saves workers an average of three hours per week per person.
The new Copilot features for Microsoft 365 apps are all designed to help improve worker efficiency, whether it’s tracking meeting and chat transcripts for easy updating or quickly adding references to documents, PDFs, and emails in a Word document.
The Copilot Agent Builder for Copilot Studio, on the other hand, is designed to help you create an AI-powered agent that meets your business needs without requiring much technical knowledge.
“One of the things we’ve heard very consistently is… there’s no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to Copilot,” Charles Lamanna, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Copilot business and industry, told Yahoo Finance.
“If you have a company like Disney or Novartis, what they want to do in Microsoft 365 with Copilot is going to be slightly different. They have different data sources, different workflows, different processes. They just have different ways of working.”
That’s where Microsoft’s Agent Builder comes in. For example, let’s say you want to help new hires better understand their benefits. You can use Copilot Studio to have an agent answer questions about your company’s healthcare offerings and direct them to relevant documents.
When a worker uses the agent, it automatically extracts data from these documents, providing them with the information they need without having to navigate multiple microsites and digital brochures.
“Anyone in a company will be able to create agents and use agents,” Lamanna said.
Microsoft’s Copilot software is a major part of its broader foray into generative AI, which includes an investment in ChatGPT developer OpenAI, and is at least partly why the company’s stock price is up more than 30% in the past 12 months. Shares of rival and Google parent Alphabet are up 14% in the same period.
During his most recent earnings reportMicrosoft reported that its intelligent cloud segment, which includes Azure services, generated revenue of $28.5 billion. That’s slightly below the $28.7 billion Wall Street had expected. And while that represents a 19% increase in revenue year over year, investors reacted negatively to the news, sending shares tumbling after the results were announced.
Email Daniel Howley at dhowley@yahoofinance.com. Follow him on Twitter at @DanielHowley.
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