Microsoft introduced Copilot – its workplace assistant – earlier this year, labelling the product as a “copilot for work.”
Copilot which will be made available for the users from November 1, will be integrated to the subscribers of Microsoft 365 apps such as Word, Excel, Teams and PowerPoint – with a subscription worth $30 per user/month.
Additionally, as part of the new service, employees at companies who use Microsoft's Copilot could theoretically send their AI helpers to meetings in their place, allowing them to miss or double-book appointments and focus on other tasks.
‘Busywork That Bogs Us Down’
With businesses including General Motors, KPMG, and Goodyear, Microsoft has been testing Copilot, which assists users with tasks like email writing and coding. Early feedback from those companies has revealed that it is used to swiftly respond to emails and inquire about meetings.
According to Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of modern work and business applications at Microsoft, “[Copilot] combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data…to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet,” he said in a March blog post.
Spataro promised that the technology would “lighten the load” for online users, stating that for many white-collar workers, “80% of our time is consumed with busywork that bogs us down.”
For many office workers, this so-called "busywork" includes attending meetings. According to a recent British study, office workers waste 213 hours annually, or 27 full working days, in meetings where the agenda could have been communicated by email.
Companies like Shopify are deliberately putting a stop to pointless meetings. When the e-commerce giant introduced an internal "cost calculator" for staff meetings, it made headlines during the summer. According to corporate leadership, each 30-minute meeting costs the company between $700 and $1,600.
Copilot will now help in reducing this expense. The AI assistant's services include the ability to "follow" meetings and produce a transcript, summary, and notes once they are over.
Microsoft, in July, noted that “the next wave of generative AI for Teams,” which included incorporating Copilot further into Teams calls and meetings.
“You can also ask Copilot to draft notes for you during the call and highlight key points, such as names, dates, numbers, and tasks using natural language commands[…]You can quickly synthesize key information from your chat threads—allowing you to ask specific questions (or use one of the suggested prompts) to help get caught up on the conversation so far, organize key discussion points, and summarize information relevant to you,” the company noted.
In regard to the same, Spataro states that “Every meeting is a productive meeting with Copilot in Teams[…]It can summarize key discussion points—including who said what and where people are aligned and where they disagree—and suggest action items, all in real-time during a meeting.
However, Microsoft is not the only tech giant working on making meeting tolerant, as Zoom and Google have also introduced AI-powered chatbots for the online workforce that can attend meetings on behalf of the user, and present its conclusions during the get-together.
