Microsoft is putting artificial intelligence to work in its Office 365 suite

By Brad Jones Published September 27, 2016

Artificial intelligence has long been heralded as a new technology with the power to change the world, but typically it is its demonstrative applications, like composing music or beating human players at board games, that make the headlines. Now, Microsoft has announced plans to unleash the power of AI in a manner that’s more likely to benefit the average user, via new Office 365 functionality.

“We have reached a point in our industry where the collective power of technology exceeds that of the individual,” reads a blog post by Microsoft’s executive vice president of worldwide business, Judson Althoff. “Where, in a matter of hours, a person can generate insights that previously would have taken days.”

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Microsoft is looking to help individuals put this power to good use. One example is a new piece of functionality dubbed Tap for Word and Outlook, which mines the Microsoft Graph for relevant content previously created by the user’s organization, and presents it for inclusion in an email of a Word document.

Meanwhile, the company’s Dynamics 365 business suite will soon gain an AI-enhanced relationships assistant. This tool use the Cortana Intelligence Suite to bring together pertinent pieces of information about particular clients.

The Cortana Intelligence Suite is already being used to great effect by major businesses. Lowe’s uses the service to track customer preferences in relation to its mixed-reality kitchen design experience, while Uber uses Microsoft Cognitive Services to check driver credentials in real-time.

More new features are set to be added to Office 365 in the near future. PowerPoint and Sway will soon offer QuickStarter functionality that prepares a curated outline in response to a topic chosen by the user, according to a report from Engadget. Excel is also set to receive the ability to turn raw geographic data into maps powered by Microsoft’s Bing service.

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Brad is an English-born writer currently splitting his time between Edinburgh and Pennsylvania. You can find him on Twitter…

Computing

Microsoft 365 Copilot gets an AI Researcher that everyone will love

Researcher agent in action inside Microsoft 365 Copilot app.

Microsoft is late to the party, but it is finally bringing a deep research tool of its own to the Microsoft 365 Copilot platform across the web, mobile, and desktop. Unlike competitors such as Google Gemini, Perplexity, or OpenAI’s ChatGPT, all of which use the Deep Research name, Microsoft is going with the Researcher agent branding.
The overarching idea, however, isn’t too different. You tell the Copilot AI to come up with thoroughly researched material on a certain topic or create an action plan, and it will oblige by producing a detailed document that would otherwise take hours of human research and compilation. It’s all about performing complex, multi-step research on your behalf as an autonomous AI agent.
Just to avoid any confusion early on, Microsoft 365 Copilot is essentially the rebranded version of the erstwhile Microsoft 365 (Office) app. It is different from the standalone Copilot app, which is more like a general purpose AI chatbot application.
Researcher: A reasoning agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot
How Researcher agent works?
Underneath the Researcher agent, however, is OpenAI’s Deep Research model. But this is not a simple rip-off. Instead, the feature’s implementation in Microsoft 365 Copilot runs far deeper than the competition. That’s primarily because it can look at your own material, or a business’ internal data, as well.
Instead of pulling information solely from the internet, the Researcher agent can also take a look at internal documents such as emails, chats, internal meeting logs, calendars, transcripts, and shared documents. It can also reference data from external sources such as Salesforce, as well as other custom agents that are in use at a company.
“Researcher’s intelligence to reason and connect the dots leads to magical moments,” claims Microsoft. Researcher agent can be configured by users to reference data from the web, local files, meeting recordings, emails, chats, and sales agent, on an individual basis — all of them, or just a select few.

Why it stands out?

Computing

Microsoft is working on something new, but it’s probably not Windows 12

The Surface Pro 11 on a white table in front of a window.

Microsoft appears to be working on a new major update, but if you're hoping for Windows 12, I wouldn't hold my breath. The company has confirmed that it's testing new content via the Insider program in the Dev Channel, and those changes might lead to a patch that's set to be released later this year. However, we're most likely looking at the successor to the current 24H2 build -- namely Windows 11 25H2 -- and not a whole new operating system.

This was first spotted by Windows Central. The publication cites its own sources as it claims that Microsoft is backporting some platform changes to offer better support for Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon X2 chip. Those changes will allow devices that house that chip to run Germanium-based Windows 11. Germanium refers to the platform release that the current Windows 11 build is built on, and it looks like the upcoming 25H2 build might also be based on Germanium -- but nothing is fully clear at this point.

Computing

Microsoft is working on making it easier to talk to your PC

The Surface Pro 11 on a white table in front of a window.

Windows 11 has support for voice commands like "Open Edge" largely for accessibility purposes but with the latest Insider preview build, it's taking a step toward going full Star Trek. Instead of remembering set phrases, Microsoft wants to enable users to give commands in more natural language.

This means you can open the Edge browser with just about any intuitive phrase that expresses your intent to "open Edge." You could say "Can you open Edge?", "Open Edge please," or "Switch to the Edge app," along with other variations. If Windows happens to get confused, it will show real-time command suggestions based on what it thinks you want so you can direct it successfully.