Microsoft adds artificial intelligence tools to office applications like Outlook, Word

NEW YORK — Microsoft is incorporating artificial intelligence tools into its office software suite, including Word, Excel and Outlook email.

The company said Thursday that the new feature, called Copilot, is a processing engine that will allow users to do things like summarize long emails, outline stories in Word, and animate slides in PowerPoint.

Microsoft 365 General Manager Colette Stallbaumer said the new features are currently only available to 20 enterprise customers. It will be rolled out to more enterprise customers in the coming months.

Microsoft is promoting this feature as a tool that will allow employees to be more productive, freeing up the time they would normally spend in their inboxes, or allowing them to more easily analyze trends in Excel.

The Redmond, Washington-based tech giant will also add a chat feature called Business Chat, which is reminiscent of the popular ChatGPT. It accepts commands and performs actions—such as summarizing an email about a specific project to colleagues—using user data.

“Today marks the next major step in the evolution of how we interact with computers, which will revolutionize the way we work and usher in a new wave of productivity growth,” said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Mattel, Instacart and others are also integrating generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Dall-E image generator to come up with ideas for new toy cars and answer customer questions about food.

Microsoft rival Google said this week that it is integrating generative AI tools into its own Workspace apps like Google Docs, Gmail and Slides. Google says it will provide features to its “trusted testers on an ongoing basis throughout the year.”

Microsoft’s announcement comes two days after OpenAI, which powers the generative AI technology that Microsoft relies on, unveiled its latest GPT-4 artificial intelligence model.