Microsoft announces the incorporation of GPT-4 technology into its Word, Excel, Outlook, and Teams tools

On Thursday, March 16, Microsoft announced the integration of GPT-4, the latest iteration of OpenAI’s artificial intelligence technology, into Microsoft 365, a suite of services for professionals including the Office suite and Teams video conferencing.

GPT-4 integration, which already works within the Bing search engine’s “conversation” tool or behind the paid version of the ChatGPT chat agent, will add new functionality to Office programs, including Word, Excel, and Outlook. If it should be widely deployed in the coming months, Microsoft is already testing it in two dozen undisclosed companies.

Presented as “Microsoft 365 Assistant”, This AI will be able to analyze information contained in professional documents stored in different places or mentioned during previous video conferences using the Teams tool. According to the American company, this “co-pilot” will then be able, on the basis of this information, to present a summary of the issues at an upcoming meeting. He might also suggest a summary of this meeting, or summarize an email exchange. This “co-pilot” will still be able to type or retype your Word document, emails, or presentations.

‘We will make mistakes’

Microsoft 365 Services will also include an app called Business Chat, which is a personal assistant to the corporate world. According to Microsoft, it will be possible to ask him to set goals for a project, list the risks of the strategy, or propose solutions to mitigate these risks.

Jared Spataro, President of Microsoft 365, admitted In a blog post detailing the project That the degree of reliability of this tool can be arbitrary: “Sometimes the co-driver is right, other times he is wrong, but his information will still be useful. They will give an idea of ​​things, not complete, but it will save time.” Mr. Spataro points out “Copilot will invite its users to check out the content that has been created, so that they can modify it using their expertise on the subject.”. In a video view of the Microsoft 365 AssistantMicrosoft Chief Scientist Jamie Teevan added: We will make mistakes, but we will quickly correct them. »

Like the Bing search engine’s conversational tool, Office Copilot is supposed to list the sources it draws from, giving links to the texts and emails it uses, in order to allow verification of their information. This parameter is not yet systematically convincing in Bing: some links point to documents unrelated to the topic explored.

Microsoft’s announcement follows Google’s announcement two days earlier. repeats A similar set of features draws on Bard, a competing artificial intelligence, which later this year will integrate its paid professional office suite, Workspace.

In February, Microsoft, which has invested more than $10 billion in OpenAI, has already included a conversational tool based on GPT-4 technology in its search engine, Bing, accessible from the Edge web browser. GPT-4 was officially unveiled on Tuesday, March 14, as the successor to GPT-3.5, the text generation technology behind the free ChatGPT chat software.