Microsoft's collaboration with OpenAI continues to bear fruit, with the software company integrating "next-generation" models into its enterprise software.
Specifically, Microsoft is bringing the new AI capabilities, called Copilot, to its Power Platform low-code environment for developing apps and workflows, as well as to Dynamics 365, an enterprise tool for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM).
"Copilot brings the power of next-generation AI capabilities and natural language processing to Dynamics 365, working alongside business professionals to help them create ideas and content faster, complete time-consuming tasks, and get insights and next best actions—just by describing what’s needed," said Emily He, Corporate Vice President for Business Applications Marketing at Microsoft.
ChatGPT for more efficient internal communication and increased sales power
As for the Power Platform, the "Power Virtual Agent" and "AI Builder" are the two that will benefit from the new models. The Virtual Agent is a chatbot tool that can now access internal company resources and, for example, create summaries of existing reports or answer customer queries. Generative AI will also help in the development of automated workflows with "AI Builder."
In Dynamics 365, Copilot will support sales teams with AI-generated emails or meeting summaries and various other text- and data-based work to speed up daily office tasks. A generated meeting summary, for example, will automatically pull information from the CRM tool, such as product and pricing information. The AI capabilities are expected to "dramatically reduce" administrative effort, according to Microsoft.
Copilot is also expected to support customer service by generating content and reducing the time it takes to find content. This should increase the productivity of service teams. Customer data is not used to train the AI.
For marketers, Microsoft is offering AI-powered Data Insights: they can use natural language to ask the AI about potential insights in their own data, and it will generate answers in response. Generative AI is also expected to support many other areas of marketing, including the generation of marketing emails, product copy for online stores, and content ideas.
The new features are currently available in preview in the US. According to Microsoft, the features announced today are just the beginning of a series of AI capabilities for business applications. The company recently unveiled new AI capabilities for Microsoft Teams and integrated a new OpenAI AI model as a chatbot into Bing Search.
Microsoft also used the term "next-generation models" when it introduced Bing's new AI features, without going into detail about what makes them "next-generation" - other than that they're "faster, more accurate, and more powerful." It's unclear whether this is GPT-4 or an improved version of GPT-3.5.
