Microsoft launches Copilot Pages to boost productivity in AI era

SAN FRANCISCO: Tech giant Microsoft on Monday launched the next wave of 365 Copilot AI features to help businesses improve productivity.

The company announced Copilot Pages — a dynamic, persistent canvas designed for multiplayer AI collaboration. It’s the first new digital artifact for the AI age.

“Second, we’re rapidly improving Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps. Our customers tell us Copilot in Microsoft Teams has changed meetings forever. We’re excited to do the same thing for advanced data analysis in Microsoft Excel, dynamic storytelling in PowerPoint, managing your inbox in Outlook, and more,” said Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President, AI at Work.

Microsoft also introduced Copilot agents, making it easier and faster than ever to automate and execute business processes on the user’s behalf.

“We’ll continue to rapidly bring all the latest models to Copilot and rapidly improve the product based on your input, adding new capabilities and new models, including OpenAI o1 with advanced reasoning,” Spataro added.

Copilot Pages takes “ephemeral AI-generated content” and makes it durable, so you can edit it, add to it, and share it with others.

You and your team can work collaboratively in a page with Copilot, seeing everyone’s work in real time and iterating with Copilot like a partner, adding more content from your data, files, and the web to your Page.

“This is an entirely new work pattern—multiplayer, human-to-AI-to-human collaboration. For Microsoft 365 Copilot customers, Pages starts rolling out today and will be generally available later in September 2024,” the company informed.

In the coming weeks, the company will also bring Copilot Pages to the more than 400 million people who have access to the free Microsoft Copilot.

The tech giant also announced Copilot in Excel with Python, combining the power of Python — one of the world’s most popular programming languages for working with data — with Copilot in Excel.

Anyone can work with Copilot to conduct advanced analysis like forecasting, risk analysis, machine learning, and visualising complex data — all using natural language, no coding required, said the company.

It also introduced Copilot agents — AI assistants designed to automate and execute business processes, working with or for humans.