On Wednesday last week, I joined a few thousand other real people attending Microsoft’s AI Tour as it passed through Sydney. We have not seen a big Microsoft event like this here for some time and on the morning of the event, the badge pickup queue spanned multiple floors and we all had to remember what it was to stand patiently in line for a big event. So, before we even discuss the technology highlights, it is worth mentioning the fact that the event was sold out. This is a clear sign that AI is no longer just a futuristic buzzword – it's here, it's happening.
Finally gaining entrance, we saw a demonstration of how Microsoft’s generative AI-powered assistant, based on OpenAI’s GPT-4, is set to revolutionise work across every industry from manufacturing to government and everything in between. But speakers and people I spoke with during the day, including CommBank who featured in the keynote, all emphasised the importance of content governance for a smooth transition. Think about it – CoPilot learns from your data, so managing content and permissions in SharePoint is key to ensuring it gets the right information and doesn't go rogue or start hallucinating.
For example, in one of the hands-on sessions, I learned that creating a chatbot with your own content was relatively easy, particularly if you know the right steps and gotchas while configuring CoPilot Studio and just want to point it at an existing website.
However, when it comes to enterprise and intranet use, which is where I see the real value, things get a little more complex. Content governance still reigns supreme and careful foundational prompt design is needed to ensure the "garbage in, garbage out" principle doesn't apply. This is important because, while the foundation models of GPT-4 are powerful, it is because they have been pre-trained on vast amounts of diverse text data from the internet. Fine-tuning them on specific tasks or domains relevant to your organisation using the options in CoPilot Studio will enhance their performance. Remember that the quality of the prompt directly impacts the quality of the AI-generated content.
If you are ready to invest in Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, how might you use it? Microsoft Copilot integrates closely with Microsoft 365, in the apps we use every day. Some use case prompts for CoPilot that will save us all time and effort:
1. Copilot for Excel: Give me a breakdown of sales by product and channel and display it in a table format
2. Copilot for PowerPoint: Create a 10-slide presentation using this word document and include relevant stock photos
3. Copilot for Word: draft a two-page project proposal based on data from document A and spreadsheet A
4. Copilot for Outlook: Draft a response saying thanks and requesting details about the second and third points in the above response
5. Copilot for Teams: Create a table of pros and cons for the issue under discussion and top 5 considerations
Imagine having a fast, secure, accurate assistant like this – that never takes holidays and doesn’t get sick. What other, more creative problem solving could you apply yourself to?
Don't just sit there waiting for CoPilot to magically appear. Start preparing your content now and think about how you can leverage Azure's generative AI capabilities to boost your productivity and innovation.
Ready to workshop your use cases and unleash the power of AI? Give us a shout at WebVine, and let's chat! We can help you navigate the exciting world of AI and ensure you're ready to hit the ground running when CoPilot arrives at your organisation.
In the meantime, check out our new report Preparing for Microsoft Copilot.