Microsoft Copilot AI Assistant Upgrade: Smarter Prompt Design

Microsoft is working hard to solve the problem of poor design in generative AI prompts, with the goal of enabling everyone to become a prompt engineer. In the coming months, Copilot, a paid service that provides AI assistance for Microsoft 365, will receive an update that includes an autocomplete feature aimed at providing suggestions to improve AI prompts.

When you start creating prompts, Copilot will quickly provide additional details to help you refine the generated content or the questions you are asking. For example, when you type "summary," Copilot will display options to automatically summarize the last 10 unread emails in your inbox or provide a summary based on other tasks related to your Office data.

Microsoft has also developed a new feature in Copilot for Microsoft 365 called "Elaborate on your prompt," which allows you to rewrite any prompt you create. This feature will be particularly useful when you want Copilot to take action on a file but are unsure about the level of detail in the prompt.

Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft AI, mentioned in a blog post, "With the new rewrite feature, Copilot can easily transform a simple prompt into a rich prompt with just one click, making it easy for everyone to become a prompt engineer." In addition, Copilot for Microsoft 365 will introduce a new "Catch Up" chat interface that highlights upcoming meetings and displays relevant documents and information to help you prepare for the meetings.

Microsoft will also allow Copilot subscribers for Microsoft 365 to create, publish, and manage prompts in the Copilot Lab, which can be customized for different teams within an organization. This will greatly simplify the process of sharing useful prompts among colleagues.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has released its latest annual Work Trend Index report, a joint report by Microsoft and LinkedIn on the use of artificial intelligence in the workplace. Based on a survey of 31,000 people in 31 countries, combined with recruitment trends on LinkedIn and data from Microsoft 365, the report provides a range of statistics on the use of artificial intelligence in enterprises.

Spataro said, "As artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent in the workplace, employees and organizations face tremendous pressure. During the pandemic, the pace and intensity of work did not slow down, so employees started bringing personal AI tools into their work." Microsoft claims that 78% of AI users are bringing personal AI tools into their work instead of waiting for organizations to introduce these tools.

The release of this self-service report comes as Microsoft faces investor pressure to prove that its significant investment in artificial intelligence will bring returns. Microsoft's recent quarterly financial report showed a 31% increase in revenue from Azure and other cloud services, with AI services contributing 7 percentage points to this growth, an increase from the previous quarter.