Microsoft is heavily investing in AI and sees ChatGPT and natural language technology as significant contributions. The company popularised PCs in the 1980s with Windows and DOS. In the 1990s, the internet became crucial to our lives. Now, it aims to establish itself as a leader in bringing AI to everyone.
After investing £10 billion in OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, earlier this year, the Bing search engine has already incorporated the technology and revealed plans for additional integrations. This will breathe life into its popular applications and tools. With natural language AI, we can interact more like talking to a real person instead of clicking or tapping.
Imagine instructing Word to write a letter or Excel to create a spreadsheet. This aligns with Microsoft’s vision for our future computer and device usage. CEO Satya Nadella has stated that every Microsoft product will incorporate AI capabilities, aiming to revolutionise machine usage. This aims to introduce augmented working, AI tools, and new user interfaces. Will it succeed? And more importantly, should it? Let’s explore its plans and speculation on the future of human-machine interactions.
Power Platform
These apps are used by tech-savvy users and include Power BI and Power Automate, which have exciting implications for ChatGPT and natural language integration. The Power apps emphasise the no-code/low-code idea, enabling users to create their own applications or set up automated processes without coding. With their ability to handle complex tasks, integrating a natural language interface would further simplify the process.
The Office of the Future
Microsoft is rumoured to integrate ChatGPT functionality into its Office 365 suite, including popular productivity tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, potentially impacting daily work tasks.
Automated Computer Code
Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, utilising OpenAI’s Codex engine, is an early adopter of natural language integration for code writing. Released in 2021, it offers coders autocomplete features. GitHub, owned by Microsoft, is an online code repository used by over 100 million developers. It was chosen as one of the first integrations of natural language technology with Microsoft-owned services, indicating the company sees great potential in improving software design and development efficiency.
Automating the Sales Process
Microsoft’s Viva Sales application uses ChatGPT for automated functionality, personalised email content, and freeing sales agents for human touch.
Collaborative Working
ChatGPT is now available on Microsoft Teams. This collaborative platform offers virtual conferencing, video calling, and automated note-taking for premium users. The features include automatic meeting recaps, real-time language translation, task creation based on conversations, call transcripts and summaries, and personalised reports for team members based on their roles. This extends to creating reports for absent team members in meetings.
Search Redefined
Microsoft integrates GPT technology into the Bing search engine, challenging Google for search kingship. Natural language search extracts facts, figures, and answers, potentially changing internet search and prompting Google to develop its own language model, Bard.
