Despite the huge potential of generative artificial intelligence for transforming industries, its nascent older commercial uses might be much more mundane: for example, formatting PowerPoint presentations, condensing conference calls, or even authoring to-do lists.
Generative A.I. has been making its presence felt within the consumer internet in various forms, such as open-ended chats and more advanced forms of internet search. This is one area where these applications have made an impact initially.
Adding Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to the everyday tools of knowledge workers and software developers may seem insignificant. However, news this week by Microsoft and Google strongly suggests otherwise. This A.I.-infused software for businesses possesses the potential to generate considerable profits from its mundane applications.
Microsoft’s chief executive, Satya Nadella, declared on Thursday a suite of tools to make work and communication more efficient. Reinforcing this goal, Nadella highlighted the new features which will advance collaboration capabilities.
Satya Nadella says:
“As we look ahead, we believe this next generation of A.I. will unlock a new wave of productivity growth,” “Remove the drudgery from our daily tasks and jobs.”
Given Microsoft and Google’s strategies to monetize their A.I. endeavors, the tools being designed are fundamentally important yet less awe-inspiring than what Google might envision for its search engine. These new tools form a part of said actions that could potentially serve billions of people worldwide.
Microsoft has made a series of declarations showing how they aim to assimilate A.I. into all areas of its operations. They have devoted $13 billion towards their joint venture with the start-up, OpenAI, whose ChatGPT conversational bot gained popularity after launching in late November.
A month ago, Microsoft integrated models from OpenAI into its Bing search engine. These models have been used to power the search engine for over a month now.
Thursday’s announcement cuts to the heart of some of Microsoft’s largest businesses, in products like its software suite that includes Word, Excel, and Outlook. Office products and related cloud services produced $11.8 billion in revenue in Microsoft’s latest quarter, while search and news advertising generated about $3.2 billion in sales.
Microsoft focused on integrating A.I. assistants, which it calls Copilots, into the software. It draws on data that business customers have already stored in the company’s systems — chats in its collaboration tool Teams, documents in its cloud, and emails on its servers.
With Business Chat, a new feature for working across the tools, someone can ask for a customer update, and it will scan recent emails, meeting notes, and other information to generate a response.
Twenty business customers are testing the products, and pricing and licensing details will be released in the coming weeks, Jared Spataro, a Microsoft executive, said in an interview.
The assistants produce sample text, but Microsoft stressed that users should review and tweak the results. When generating text, the Copilot may make mistakes or generate irrelevant information.
It can also suggest feelings or emotions. One executive showed how the Copilot in Word could write a personal speech celebrating her daughter’s high school graduation. “In summary, to say we are proud of Tasha would be an understatement,” the model proposed.
As Mr. Spataro demonstrated how he could use the assistant to generate an email providing his feedback on a draft of a blog post, the A.I. tool generated an email that said Mr. Spataro was “impressed” and had made minor grammatical changes to the post — though it had no way of knowing whether he was “impressed” or that the changes were only grammatical.
“It doesn’t know at all,” Mr. Spataro said when asked about it. He said the email should be edited, adding, “I mean, this is an example of why we called it a Copilot.”
Last month, having noticed preliminary and peculiar results from the chat utility available in the newly-minted edition of Bing, Microsoft actively drew back some of its features.
In its first month since launch, millions of people actively used Bing – with one-third being new users. As Microsoft looks to incorporate advertisements into its offering, its strategy will doubtless involve experimentation.
Microsoft and Google are vying to be leaders in the chatbot world; Microsoft is innovating intensely to keep that advantage. Google has recently stated that its AI-based bot called “Bard” is due for a near future experimental deployment.
Google’s vice president of global ads, Dan Taylor, expressed in an interview last month that the company has been unsuccessful at implementing a profit model for their chatbot and thus still hasn’t figured out how to make money.
Google recently conveyed its strategy to make money from A.I. tech by dramatically incorporating it into various software products that organizations must pay for and selling the primary A. I technology to other organizations.
Google, Gmail, and Docs announced their plan to integrate A.I. into their email and word-processing tools to assist people in composing emails, job descriptions, and other written documents starting only from a brief synopsis.
With a few clicks, Google said, users could adjust the tone to be more playful or professional and have the A.I. trim or expand on the content. The features will first be available to what the company calls trusted users.
Kurian, the chief executive of Google Cloud, explains that generative A.I. has a significance equal to the technological transition from desktop computing to mobile devices. Powering this system are large language models, enabling it to construct new text and other media when given commands.
The company plans to attract programmers who want to create new A.I. applications and businesses by providing two products – PaLM API and MakerSuite – according to Google’s Mr. Kurian.
Google’s AI solution, called Cloud AutoML, uses machine learning algorithms to help businesses automate the creation of custom machine learning models. This can help businesses use their data better and improve decision-making processes.
Introducing these new AI tools marks an exciting development for businesses leveraging AI to improve their operations. As AI technology evolves, we expect to see even more innovative solutions emerge.
Source: NYTimes
