Tag: Copilot

Featured Article : Amazon Launching ‘Q’ Chatbot

Posted on by Paul Stradling

Following on from the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard (and Duet), Microsoft’s Copilot, and X’s Grok, now Amazon has announced that it will soon be launching its own ‘Q’ generative AI chatbot (for business).

Cue Q 

Amazon has become the latest of the tech giants to announce the introduction of its own generative AI chatbot. Recently announced at the Las Vegas conference for its AWS, ‘Q’ is Amazon’s chatbot that will be available as part of its market-leading AWS cloud platform. As such, Q is being positioned from the beginning as very much a business-focused chatbot with Amazon introducing the current preview version as: “Your generative AI–powered assistant designed for work that can be tailored to your business.” 

What Can It Do? 

The key point from Amazon is that Q is a chatbot that can be tailored to help your business get the most from AWS. Rather like Copilot is embedded in (and works across) Microsoft’s popular 365 apps, Amazon is pitching Q as working across many of its services, providing better navigation and leveraging for AWS customers with many (often overlapping) service options. For example, Amazon says Q will be available wherever you work with AWS (and is an “expert” on patterns in AWS), in Amazon QuickSight (its business intelligence (BI) service built for the cloud), in Amazon Connect (as a customer service chatbot helper), and will also be available in AWS Supply Chain (to help with inventory management).

Just like other AI chatbots, it’s powered by AI models which in this case includes Amazon’s Titan large language model. Also, like other AI chatbots, Q uses a web-based interface to answer questions (streamlining searches), can provide summaries, generate content and more. However, since it’s part of AWS, Amazon’s keen to show that it adds value by doing so within the context of the business it’s tailored to and becomes an ‘expert’ on your business. For example, Amazon says: “Amazon Q can be tailored to your business by connecting it to company data, information, and systems, made simple with more than 40 built-in connectors. Business users—like marketers, project and program managers, and sales representatives, among others—can have tailored conversations, solve problems, generate content, take actions, and more.” The 40 connectors it’s referring to include popular enterprise apps (and storage depositories) like S3, Salesforce, Google Drive, Microsoft 365, ServiceNow, Gmail, Slack, Atlassian, and Zendesk. The power, value, and convenience that Q may provide to businesses may also, therefore, help with AWS customer retention and barriers to exit.

Benefits 

Just some of the many benefits that Amazon describes Q as having include:

– Delivering fast, accurate, and relevant (and secure) answers to your business questions.

– Quickly connecting to your business data, information, and systems, thereby enabling employees to have tailored conversations, solve problems, generate content, and take actions relevant to your business.

– Generating answers and insights according to the material and knowledge that you provide (backed up with references and source citations).

– Respecting access control based on user permissions.

– Enabling admins to easily apply guardrails to customise and control responses.

– Providing administrative controls, e.g. it can block entire topics and filter both questions so that it responds in a way that is consistent with a company’s guidelines.

– Extracting key insights on your business and generating reports and summaries.

– Easy deployment and security, i.e. it supports access control for your data and can be integrated with your external SAML 2.0–supported identity provider (Okta, Azure AD, and Ping Identity) to manage user authentication and authorisation.

When, How, And How Much? 

Q’s in preview at the moment with Amazon giving no exact date for its full launch. Although many of the Q capabilities are available without charge during the preview period, Amazon says It will be available in two pricing plans: Business and Builder. Amazon Q Business (its basic version) will be priced at $20/mo, per-user, and Builder at $25/mo, per-user. The difference appears to be that Builder provides the real AWS expertise plus other features including debugging, testing, and optimising your code, troubleshooting applications and more. Pricewise, Q is cheaper per month/per user than Microsoft’s Copilot and Google’s Duet (both $30).

Not All Good 

Despite Amazon’s leading position in the cloud computing world with AWS, and its technological advances in robotics (robots for its warehouses), its forays in space travel (with Amazon Blue) and into delivery-drone technology, it appears that it may be temporarily lagging in AI-related matters. For example, in addition to being later to market with this AI chatbot ‘Q’, in October, a Stanford University index ranked Amazon’s Tital AI model (which is used in Q) as bottom for transparency in a ranking of the top foundational AI models with only 12 per cent (compared to the top ranking Llama 2 from Meta at 54 per cent). As Stanford puts it: “Less transparency makes it harder for other businesses to know if they can safely build applications that rely on commercial foundation models; for academics to rely on commercial foundation models for research; for policymakers to design meaningful policies to rein in this powerful technology; and for consumers to understand model limitations or seek redress for harms caused.” 

Also, perhaps unsurprisingly due to Q only just being in preview, some other reports about it haven’t been that great. For example, feedback about Q (leaked from Amazon’s internal channels and ticketing systems) highlight issues like severe hallucinations and leaking confidential data. Hallucinations are certainly not unique to Q as reports about and admissions by OpenAI about ChatGPT’s hallucinations have been widely reported.

Catching Up 

Amazon also looks like it will be makingeven greater efforts to catch up in the AI development world. For example, in September it said Alexa will be getting ChatGPT-like voice capabilities, and it’s been reported that Amazon’s in the process of building a language model called Olympus that could be bigger and better than OpenAI’s GPT-4!

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Although a little later to the party with AI chatbot, Amazon’s dominance in the cloud market with AWS means it has a huge number of business customers to sell its business-focused Q to. This will not only provide another revenue stream to boost its vast coffers but will also enhance, add value to, and allow customers to get greater leverage from the different branches of its different cloud-related services. What with Microsoft, Google, X, Meta, and others all having their own chatbot assistants, it’s almost expected that any other big players in the tech world like Amazon would bring out their own soon.

Despite some (embarrassing internal) reviews of issues in its current preview stage and a low transparency ranking in a recent Stanford report, Amazon clearly has ambitions to make fast progress in catching up in the AI market. With its market power, wealth, and expertise in diversification and its advances in technologies like space travel and robotics and the synergies it brings (e.g. satellite broadband), you’d likely not wish to bet against Amazon making quick progress to the top in AI too.

Q therefore is less of a standalone chatbot like ChatGPT (OpenAI and former workers have helped develop AI for others) and more of Copilot and Duet arrangement in that it’s being introduced to enhance and add value to existing Amazon cloud services, but in a very focused way (more so for Builder) in that it’s “trained on over 17 years’ worth of AWS knowledge and experience”.

Despite Q still being in preview, Amazon’s ambitions to make a quantum leap ahead are already clear if the reports about its super powerful, GPT-4 rivalling (still under development) Olympus model are accurate. It remains to be seen, therefore, how well Q performs once it’s really out there and its introduction marks another major move by a serious contender in the rapidly evolving and growing generative AI market.

Tech Insight : A Dozen Ways Copilot Can Help Your Business

Posted on by Paul Stradling

With Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant now embedded within the Microsoft 365 apps and services to help users save time and increase productivity, we look at a dozen things you can do with Copilot to help your business.

Microsoft 365 Copilot 

Copilot fuses ChatGPT version 4 and Microsoft Graph. More specifically, Copilot is designed to integrate the capabilities of ChatGPT version 4 (a sophisticated language model developed by OpenAI), with the extensive data and connectivity provided by Microsoft Graph.

Microsoft Graph is an API platform that enables developers to access and integrate data and insights from various Microsoft services and applications, such as Office 365, Windows 10, and Enterprise Mobility + Security, facilitating the creation of rich, interconnected applications within the Microsoft ecosystem.

This integration allows Copilot to leverage the conversational AI capabilities of ChatGPT in conjunction with the rich data ecosystem of Microsoft 365, enhancing productivity and offering more advanced features within Microsoft’s suite of applications.

Microsoft says Copilot can increase an employee’s productivity by as much as 50 per cent and that it can unlock the other 90 per cent of things that its apps can do that most users never try.

A Dozen Ways Copilot Can Help 

With this in mind, here are a dozen ways that you can use Copilot to help with your business:

1. Automating Customer Service Responses 

Copilot can manage routine customer service queries by providing instant, accurate responses to FAQs. This helps by reducing wait times and improving customer satisfaction. It can also act as a way to identify and escalate the more complex issues to human representatives, ensuring a balance between efficiency and having a personal touch.

2. Generating Reports and Summaries 

Microsoft 365 Copilot can also analyse large sets of data to generate detailed reports and executive summaries. This can be really helpful in identifying key metrics and trends, which are essential for strategic planning and decision-making, without the need for manual data crunching. This is an important way that Copilot can save time and effort and add more transparency to a business.

3. Drafting and Editing All Manner Of Business Documents 

Copilot assists in creating professional business documents, emails, and presentations. It offers suggestions on content, structure, and style, ensuring that the documents are not only well-written but also tailored to their intended audience. Again, this can save time and improve productivity but also improve the quality of business communications.

4. Data Analysis and Insights 

By analysing complex datasets, Copilot can uncover valuable insights, helping businesses understand customer behaviour, market trends, and operational efficiency. This leads to more informed decision-making and strategy development.

5. Scheduling and Calendar Management 

It streamlines calendar management by scheduling meetings, appointments, and events based on your availability. It can also send automated reminders and updates, ensuring efficient time management and reducing scheduling conflicts.

6. Training and Educational Resources 

Copilot can create custom training materials and educational content that are specifically tailored to a company’s processes and systems. This can help in onboarding new employees more efficiently and keeping the workforce updated on new tools and practices. This can, of course, also save money on training and potentially improve the efficiency of training (because it can be more targeted and customised).

7. Automating Routine Tasks 

For tasks like data entry, inventory management, and basic accounting, Copilot can automate these processes, thereby reducing the risk of human error and allowing employees to focus on more strategic and creative tasks.

8. Language Translation and Localisation 

Microsoft Copilot can also be used to facilitate global business operations by translating documents and communications into various languages, ensuring that businesses can effectively communicate with international clients and partners.

9. Market Research and Analysis 

Copilot can scour the internet and various databases to conduct market research, analyse industry trends, and provide actionable insights, helping businesses stay ahead in their market.

10. Social Media Management 

Copilot can also help with creating, scheduling, and analysing social media posts. Copilot can also track engagement metrics, thereby helping businesses understand their audience better and refine their social media strategies.

11. Project Management Assistance  

Microsoft 365 Copilot can also help with tracking project milestones, resource allocation, and progress updates. This can ensure that projects stay on track, resources are efficiently used, and stakeholders are kept informed.

12. Legal and Compliance Documentation 

One other really helpful aspect of Copilot is that it can assist in drafting legal documents and ensure that business operations comply with relevant laws and regulations. This is crucial for mitigating legal risks and maintaining a company’s reputation.

What Does This Mean For Your Business? 

The integration of Microsoft’s Copilot AI into the Microsoft 365 suite is a significant advancement for 365 and for business technology generally. With Copilot embedded in popular 365 apps, businesses now have a powerful ‘always on’ tool at their disposal to help with productivity, efficiency, creativity, adding value, and more. As such, this integration goes beyond mere convenience, and it taps into the unrealised potential of Microsoft 365, unlocking functionalities that many users have yet to explore, i.e. it can help businesses to leverage (and get more out of) what they’re already paying for from Microsoft.

By being able to quickly and easily automate tasks, e.g. from customer service to complex data analysis, Copilot not only saves time but also enhances creativity and leaves employees free to focus on more strategic and innovative tasks, thereby elevating the quality of work and driving business growth. Also, Copilot’s intuitive, natural language capabilities, akin to those of ChatGPT version 4, make it a user-friendly assistant that can simplify complex tasks and make technology more accessible to everyone in the organisation.

Copilot, therefore, serves as a tool for upskilling employees. It exposes them to a broader range of Microsoft 365 capabilities, fostering a deeper understanding and more efficient use of the software. This aspect of Copilot is particularly valuable as it achieves upskilling organically, without the need for additional training resources. It could be said that Copilot is not just enhancing productivity, but it’s also expanding the technological proficiency of the entire workforce.

For businesses, in addition to streamlining operations, Copilot can also help deliver a competitive edge e.g., the insights gleaned from Copilot’s data analysis and market research capabilities can inform strategic decisions, offering a clearer view of market trends and customer behaviours. Its ability to handle language translations and ensure compliance with legal standards positions businesses for global reach and operational safety may also be of real use for many businesses.

Microsoft 365 Copilot, therefore, is more than an incremental update to business software, but could prove to a transformative tool that can significantly enhance how businesses operate (if businesses make sure they use it). The rewards for using what is a comprehensive, and relatively easy-to-use solution that unlocks the power of the 365 apps could be to propel your businesses into a new era of efficiency and innovation.

Tech News : Copilot Can Attend Meetings For You

Posted on by Paul Stradling

Following trials, Microsoft’s AI assistant ‘Copilot’, which can even attend meetings for you, will be generally available to all Microsoft 365 Enterprise customers from 1 November.

Copilot

First introduced in March 2023 and rolled out as part free update to Windows 11, Copilot is an AI assistant that’s embedded within Microsoft 365 apps and services to help users save time, increase productivity, increase creativity, and essentially upskill themselves.

Everyday Companion

Created using ChatGPT version 4 and Microsoft Graph (an API developer platform that connects multiple services and devices), Copilot is natural language conversational (generative AI) chatbot that’s designed to give human-like responses (like ChatGPT) to questions and link aspects of all the 365 apps together in a new and more productive way. Microsoft summarises the purpose and benefits of this “everyday companion” as something that “Combs across your entire universe of data at work, including emails, meetings, chats, documents and more, plus the web” and “like an assistant, it has a deep understanding of you, your job, your priorities and your organisation.” Microsoft say it “goes far beyond simple questions and answers to give you a head start on some of your most complex or tedious tasks” and that you can “ask for what you want in natural language and the technology is smart enough to answer, create it or take action”.

Attends Meetings For You?

One of the features of Copilot that has been widely reported in the media is that it can essentially attend meetings for you by summarising meetings held in Teams for anyone who’s unable to attend. Microsoft says that using Copilot, you can “Follow a Teams meeting that you could not attend live, directly from Outlook on your own time”.

Copilot can make a summary of key discussion points of meetings, including who said what, where people are aligned and also where they disagree. It can suggest action items as well, all in real-time during a meeting. It can also recap meetings for you and send you the notes afterwards.

Many Other Capabilities

With Copilot embedded in all the 365 popular apps, some of its many other capabilities include summarising email threads, drafting emails, drafting documents (e.g. contracts and letters), creating presentations, and generating reports using data from different apps and sources, scheduling meetings, and managing project timelines, analysing, and sorting through data in excel (with Python), and much more. In short, it can both take away the donkey work of some tasks and save time, but it has the capacity to dramatically improve productivity and creativity, plus provide valuable new business insights, and improve competitiveness.

Challenges

However, the fact that Copilot can carry out so many tasks (so well) on behalf of human users does present some challenges and has led to criticism from some commentators. For example:

– Businesses could become dangerously reliant on AI-powered assistance. For instance, what if there are disruptive technical problems with it or what if it’s hacked? Also, businesses may lose touch with some aspects of business and may put too much trust in a technology that is in its early stages and is known to make things up / get things wrong (e.g. AI ‘hallucinations’).

– Security and privacy concerns. Questions are being asked such as whether any data shared with it is secure/stored securely and/or used to train the AI model (Microsoft says it won’t be used to train). Microsoft says, however, that Copilot “includes enterprise-grade security, privacy, compliance, and responsible AI to ensure all data processing happens inside your Microsoft 365 tenant”.

– Its capabilities and widescale use could disrupt admin-based jobs.

– Its potential to lead to legal issues for business users, e.g. copyright infringement issues (even though AI companies have said they’ll cover the risk). For Microsoft, for example, it could fall foul of aspects of new AI laws (the EU AI Act) if it’s not compliant, such as if it’s not obvious or clear whether content has been created by humans or AI.

– If Copilot can attend meetings and provide a summary for users, this could affect company discipline and communication, e.g. people may simply not bother to attend when they should.

How Much?

Copilot for Enterprise customers will be priced at $30 / £25 per month.

What Does This Mean For Your Business?

Microsoft’s going ‘all out’ with their AI and Copilot. After many announcements, it will be finally available to Microsoft 365 Enterprise customers from 1 November.

Those who have already used AI natural language chatbots (like ChatGPT) will know their value in saving time and boosting productivity in a user-friendly way so with Copilot embedded in 365’s apps, businesses will have an instant, flexible, and effective way to boost productivity, upskill staff in IT and get much more out the most popular apps in Microsoft 365. For those worried about how to get the best out of it (and with the time and inclination to learn about prompts), Microsoft will soon be integrating Copilot Lab, which teaches users how to make good prompts, into Copilot.

Although Copilot can carry out all manner of tasks for businesses, some critics have pointed out that an over-reliance on it could be risky and that the widescale use of AI like tools like Copilot could disrupt admin-based jobs. For Microsoft (which has invested heavily in in the development of AI), Copilot is a way to compete, stay ahead in the market, and provide a way to link all its apps together in an innovative and value-adding way. Microsoft’s 365 Copilot could be a potentially valuable tool for any business but as with any tool, if it’s not used effectively, businesses won’t get the value from it, therefore it’s going to be a case of experimenting to learn.

For Microsoft and other AI companies, new regulations for their AI tools lie ahead with the hope that Copilot and other AI tools provide adequate protection for users and businesses as well as delivering productivity benefits.