Microsoft unveils ‘multiplayer AI collaboration’ tool for work, trying to overcome Copilot qualms

Microsoft is aiming to address skepticism about the value of AI in its flagship productivity applications — and justify the premium price for business users — with a new wave of features for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

The company on Monday introduced a new feature called Copilot Pages that lets multiple users collaborate on a persistent shared page, verifying and pulling in content and insights that they’ve found and generated on their own with help from an AI chatbot.

“This is an entirely new work pattern — multiplayer, human to AI to human collaboration,” said Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s AI at Work corporate vice president, in a post announcing the new feature.

It’s part of a wave of new AI features released and previewed Monday morning for Microsoft 365 programs including Excel, PowerPoint, Word, and Outlook.

The announcements come amid reports that some business customers aren’t yet finding Microsoft’s AI features for business worth the extra $30/user per month.

AI is sparking a competitive frenzy in business and productivity applications, with startups and tech giants seeing an opportunity to reset a market segment that Microsoft has historically defined.

Some of those rivals are getting increasingly pointed with their jabs.

“So many customers are so disappointed in what they bought from Microsoft Copilots because they’re not getting the accuracy and the response that they want,” said Marc Benioff, the Salesforce CEO, during the company’s Aug. 28 earnings call. “Microsoft has disappointed so many customers with AI.”

Office apps and related services, sold under Microsoft 365 umbrella, remain stalwarts of the company’s business, generating nearly $55 billion or more than 22% of Microsoft’s overall revenue annually.

In its announcement Monday morning, Microsoft said total Copilot customers grew more than 60% quarter over quarter, and the number of people who use Copilot at work doubled over the same time period. As an example of the growth, Microsoft said telecom giant Vodafone signed on to use the technology for 68,000 employees.

However, Microsoft so far has seen more AI traction in other areas, such as GitHub Copilot, which accounted for more than 40% of GitHub’s revenue in Microsoft’s most recent fiscal year; and the Azure OpenAI service, largely responsible for the six points that AI added to the overall 30% growth of Microsoft’s cloud platform last year.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella joined Spataro on Monday morning for a virtual announcement of the new AI features, which the company has dubbed “Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2.”

• Microsoft announced the general availability of Copilot in Excel, including a new feature that integrates Python for data analysis, while also supporting more formulas.
• Copilot in PowerPoint, which lets users create presentations using natural language, is adding the ability to incorporate company-branded templates and visual assets.
• An updated feature in Copilot for Teams incorporates both the meeting transcript and the typed chat to generate insights.
• In the Outlook email program, a new Microsoft 365 Copilot feature helps users prioritize their inbox.
• Copilot in Word will add the ability to reference emails and meetings as part of AI queries, beyond the existing incorporation of data from the web and work documents.
• Microsoft introduced Copilot agents, AI assistants designed to automate business processes, with a new agent builder feature to help users create custom agents within BizChat and SharePoint​.

The company released the first Microsoft 365 Copilot wave nearly a year ago, in November 2023.