What To Expect From Google’s And Microsoft’s Newly Launched Ai Office Tools
As we all know by now, artificial technology is apparently the modernized tech that many companies have a keen eye on to capitalize on it, it’s something the big tech companies are keen to take full advantage of. Saying this, it comes as no surprise when we get to know that Google and Microsoft are in on the trend, and both have announced the introduction of new AI-assisted software in the same week.
Google has been investing in AI for many years now and said it had reached a “pivotal moment” in its AI journey, which means that we will finally be able to see the product that Google has been working on and investing in for a long time now.
Earlier this week, the company revealed its introducing new AI-powered features to Google Workspace – Gmail, Docs, meet – and the power of AI to developers and businesses looking forward to building on Google’s Language Models.
“We’re in the midst of another shift with AI that is having a profound effect on every industry,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud.
Microsoft also announced on Thursday that it would be infusing AI tools into its Suite of Office Software, which is Microsoft Office 365, including Word, Excel, and Outlook emails, however, they further explained that this new feature will require human intelligence to keep it in check as it may not work flawlessly.
“Today marks the next major step in the evolution of how we interact with computing, which will fundamentally change the way we work and unlock a new wave of productivity growth,” Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft.
Now the question arises, what changes are in store for the users of this competing and rivaling software?
Google Workspace:
The old days of writer’s block and terrifying blank pages might be over. Google plans to embed a generative AI much like Microsoft in Google’s Docs, and Gmail to help people with their writing and help their users get started on the platform.
The AI model will be able to help its users with automated drafts for job descriptions or also invitations to your events or birthday parties.
Kurian from Google explained the usage of this new feature, “Simply type a topic you’d like to write about, and a draft will instantly be generated for you. With your collaborative AI partner, you can continue to refine and edit, getting more suggestions as needed.”
Ai will also be helping workers rewrite their messages to make their message possess the right tone and structure, for example, the users could use commands like, “make this more formal” and if they don’t like the first result, a “view another” button will provide options. If users don’t know what tone they want to use in their message, then they could also input a tone by using the “I’m feeling lucky” button in Gmail and it will provide a “new playful voice altogether”.
The new AI features will allow workers to summarize and catch up with long email threads or create briefs based on many google Docs or Emails.
Microsoft’s Copilot:
In a similar thread to Google, Microsoft’s AI-powered engine is a new feature that they have named, Copilot. It will allow users to do things like summarizing long emails, draft stories in MS Word, and animate slides in MS PowerPoint.
Microsoft is marketing the feature as a tool that will allow workers to increase their productivity and free up the time that they usually spend in their inbox or allow them to easily analyze trends in Excel.
The tech giant will also add a chat function by the name of “business chat” and it will resemble the popular AI-powered Chatbot named ChatGPT. It’s also quite similar to ChatGPT for the reason that it takes “commands” and does the work for you, which means that you will be able to type in accurate prompts and simply ask the Chatbot to perform a task for you and you could use the time to do something else, this has the potential to enhance your productivity by a big margin.
It can do tasks like summarizing an email about a particular project to co-workers by using users’ data. This being said, it has been clearly stated by both companies that “the best is yet to come”.
“AI is no replacement for the ingenuity, creativity, and smarts of real people. Sometimes the AI gets things wrong, sometimes it delights you with something offbeat, and oftentimes it requires guidance,” said Johanna Voolich, vice president of products at Google Workspace, in a statement.