Microsoft Corp is deploying a new Open AI-powered assistant, called Dynamics 365 Copilot, that handles tasks such as sales, marketing, and customer service. This way is trying to catch up with rivals in the corporate applications market, such as Oracle, Salesforce, and SAP. Dynamics 365 Copilot can draft contextual chat and email answers to customer-service queries. It also can help marketers come up with customer categories to target and write product listings for e-commerce. To help customer service representatives, Copilot will comb through a company’s materials and a customer’s case history and offer answers based on that knowledge. The new capabilities were released in preview form last Monday for early customers. “If you think of a customer service agent, he’s dealing with a customer inquiry and 18 different databases internally to come up with the responses,” Microsoft’s CEO Nadella said. “Now you have this copilot that allows you to interrogate the 18 databases and craft a response without distracting the agent from the customer," he said. Marketers can have chats with their customer data software in plain English to develop targeted customer groups and also get suggestions for additional segments they may not have thought of. The bot will also help them get creative, making suggestions for email campaigns based on topics and requested tone. On March 16, Microsoft plans to launch a set of AI enhancements for its Office software. In business applications, Microsoft was lagging behind its rivals. Now the company is adding language-generation tools to everything from its Bing internet-search engine to the Teams corporate-conferencing software.
Microsoft released yesterday a Windows 11 update that adds the AI-powered Bing search and chat features to the taskbar. Windows 11 is also getting improvements to widgets, tabs inside Notepad, and a screen recording feature, among other new features. "We’re reimagining what I think of as an increasingly AI-powered Windows for the future," says Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s Head of Consumer Marketing, in an interview with The Verge. "Soon hundreds of millions of Windows 11 users can get access to this incredible new technology to search, chat, answer questions, and generate content from the right on their Windows taskbar," said Windows Chief Panos Panay in a blog post. The expansion of Bing chat to the Windows 11 taskbar comes just a week after Microsoft rolled out the same mode to Bing on mobile and in Skype conversations.
Snap Inc. announced yesterday that it was introducing My AI, a ChatGPT-powered artificial intelligence bot, into its Snapchat app. The goal is to allow users to talk with the chatbot as they would with their human friends. The Chief Executive of Snap Inc, Evan Spiegel, said that My AI will first roll out to subscribers of the Snapchat+ service — which costs $3.99 a month — but he hopes it will ultimately become available to all Snapchat users. The chatbot has been trained to avoid swear words and sexually explicit content and to decline requests to write academic essays. Other than that, at launch, My AI is essentially just a fast mobile-friendly version of ChatGPT inside Snapchat. The company, with 2.5 million subscribers, has been aiming to diversify its revenue base beyond advertising. While ChatGPT — the fastest-growing consumer software product in history — has become a productivity tool, Snap’s implementation treats it like a persona, as shown in the picture below. The design suggests that My AI is another friend inside of Snapchat to hang out with, not a search engine. Snap is one of the first clients of OpenAI’s new enterprise tier called Foundry, which lets companies run its latest GPT-3.5 model with dedicated computing designed for large workloads.
The banks JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup are restricting employees from using ChatGPT, according to The Wall Street Journal. Also, other business organizations, like Goldman Sachs and Verizon Communications have blocked access to ChatGPT. Last week, telecom company Verizon barred the chatbot from its corporate systems, saying it could lose ownership of customer information or source code that its employees typed into ChatGPT. The New York City public schools in January banned the chatbot from their internet networks and school devices. Companies are using the chatbot to automate tasks, write emails, and research topics, despite the system sometimes responding with misinformation or wrong answers. Microsoft Corp., which has invested billions of dollars in OpenAI, debuted an upgraded Bing search engine using ChatGPT’s technology. Users reported that the search engine, which also functions as a chatbot, responded to questions with sometimes disturbing answers.
Microsoft shared the preview release of the new Bing and Edge mobile apps powered by ChatGPT this week. It also announced the rollout of voice input and an enhancement of Skype. The software giant envisions that all new Bing and Edge mobile apps serve as "a copilot for the web", as 64% of searchers occur on mobile phones. Tapping the Bing icon at the bottom of the IOS and Android app, it appears a chat session. "Ask simple or complex questions and receive answers and citations. Choose how you want your answers displayed – bullet points, text, or simplified responses. Explore the Bing chat experience to refine your query or compose an email, poem, or list," said the company. Microsoft also introduced an AI-powered Bing for Skype. Skype is used daily by 36 million people.
