Microsoft announced a host of changes to its Microsoft Copilot AI today during Microsoft Ignite that make the chatbot more interactive and participatory, particularly in Teams meetings. The updates expand Copilot’s role as a business assistant in Office applications such as Teams, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
Microsoft has added some flexibility to the chatbot’s output, so users can modify it with instructions to make its format and tone more suited to their personal tastes. Word and PowerPoint will have new customization features to start, but the company says other Microsoft 365 apps will gain support over time.
Microsoft also announced changes to how Copilot will work in Teams meetings next year. Copilot will start taking notes during meetings and then share them with participants. If users want a transcript from a specific person, they can ask the chatbot to “quote” them and it will annotate what they say for them.
Microsoft has separated Copilot from meeting transcripts, so meeting participants can now use the bot while the Teams session is in progress, but those interactions won’t be recorded. In addition to answering questions, the bot will create notes in real time and may be asked to record quotes from specific people.
As shown in the animation above, Copilot will sometimes offer to display things on the whiteboard, such as meeting discussion points. The whiteboard is shared with each person in the meeting for collaboration purposes.
In PowerPoint, workers will soon be able to point the chatbot at their company’s image library and even use Microsoft Designer to modify them. In the spring, the company says Copilot will be able to set up users for meetings by gathering relevant information from Outlook emails, calendar invitations, and related documents. And finally, Copilot in Word will soon have the ability to bring users up to speed on document revisions.
Microsoft also announced some new Copilot packages: Copilot for Dynamics 365; Service Copilot; and Sales Copilot. In Dynamics 365, Copilot will offer quick responses for field technicians, while the service version (available early 2024) is intended for “agent-assisted support,” providing personalized answers and resources for customers. Copilot for Sales (available Q1 2024), like the other two, will serve as a means to access information, with a particular focus on AI-generated meeting summaries that include customer details, names and positions of those attending a meeting. meeting and more.
