Microsoft is holding a special “future of work with AI” event today, where the company says it’ll be “reinventing productivity with AI.” Microsoft is expected to demonstrate how its ChatGPT-like AI will work in Microsoft 365 and Office apps like Teams, Word, and Outlook. CEO Satya Nadella and head of Microsoft 365 Jared Spataro will host the event starting at 8AM PT / 11AM ET.
The event takes place just two days after Google announced AI features in Gmail, Docs, and more to rival Microsoft, in what looks like another front in the battle between the two companies over the future of productivity apps.
The Verge revealed last month that Microsoft was planning an AI event in March to demo how its new ChatGPT-like AI will transform its Office productivity apps. Microsoft has now confirmed that its Bing chatbot is powered by OpenAI’s new GPT-4 model, so we’re now expecting to see how this or similar models can generate emails in Outlook, write documents in Word, take meeting notes in Microsoft Teams, and much more.
Microsoft has already launched a new generative CoPilot AI experience in Dynamics 365 and Viva Sales, which uses OpenAI models to create sales emails, so deeper integration into core Microsoft Office products like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook could make creating documents or presentations a lot easier.
Google has demonstrated similar AI features in its own Google Workspace suite, but the search giant is only allowing “trusted testers” to get access right now. Microsoft was quick to launch its AI-powered version of Bing publicly, so the race for AI domination in productivity apps may well come down to which company can deliver the best features to the most people.
Microsoft’s future of work with AI event takes place on Thursday, March 16th, 2023 at 11AM ET / 8AM PT.
Microsoft is streaming its AI event over at its dedicated news site. It won’t be streamed on YouTube or Twitter, but you will be able to tune into the event on LinkedIn.
The Verge will be covering Microsoft’s AI event as the news happens, so stay tuned for all of the Microsoft 365 announcements later today.
