Microsoft 365's AI-powered Copilot is Getting More Features and Paid Access (theverge.com) 19
Microsoft is expanding preview access to its Microsoft 365 Copilot, a digital assistant based on OpenAI's GPT-4 that brings AI-powered capabilities across Microsoft 365 apps and services. The tech giant has also announced a new indexing tool that lets Copilot more accurately report on internal company data, alongside some new Copilot features for apps like Microsoft Whiteboard, Outlook, and PowerPoint. From a report: The company is launching the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program -- an invitation-only paid preview that will initially be rolled out to 600 global customers. Prior to this expansion, just 20 customers have been able to test the Microsoft 365 Copilot. Those new customers will be asked to pay an unspecified amount for the privilege, but Microsoft doesn't say when the rollout will begin.
Microsoft is also introducing a range of new capabilities to the Microsoft 365 Copilot. A new Semantic Index feature is being rolled out for enterprise customers running the Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 suite that creates an intuitive map of both user and company data. Microsoft says that the Semantic Index "is critical to getting relevant, actionable responses to prompts in Microsoft 365 Copilot." For example, Microsoft says that by asking Copilot about a "March sales report," the tool will recognize that "sales reports are produced by Kelly on the finance team and created in Excel," rather than simply looking for any documents containing those keywords.
Microsoft is also introducing a range of new capabilities to the Microsoft 365 Copilot. A new Semantic Index feature is being rolled out for enterprise customers running the Microsoft 365 E3 or E5 suite that creates an intuitive map of both user and company data. Microsoft says that the Semantic Index "is critical to getting relevant, actionable responses to prompts in Microsoft 365 Copilot." For example, Microsoft says that by asking Copilot about a "March sales report," the tool will recognize that "sales reports are produced by Kelly on the finance team and created in Excel," rather than simply looking for any documents containing those keywords.
Usual MS question (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you turn it off and if, how?
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Of course not. If you pay a little extra though they'll let you watch it suffer.
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Yeah, this is important to anyone who writes professionally. When making a copyright statement, you must include what AI generated content was used and how much. In short, this "handy feature" directly limits their users right to assert copyright on what they're writing.
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You can probably turn it off via some obscure registry setting. And then it will get turned on again on every update. And while off it will frequently bully you to turn it on again. You know, the usual small-uncaring evil MS routinely does and its Stockholm-Syndrome suffering users cheer for.
Data Collection (Score:5, Interesting)
And how much of each person's proprietary data will be getting sent to MS and used for whatever purposes they desire?
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100% of not just your own person's data but also that of everyone you know, and the AI will be extrapolating all kinds of things about it too.
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I see another $500M EU fine coming in. Maybe this time they can also add a serious threat of making distribution of this crap illegal in the EU, because that is the next step.
Renting software (Score:2)
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Renting software / So hot right now.
Is that some kind of BDSM fetish thing? Like one of those doms that takes control of your wallet and tells you how and when to spend it, often on them.
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So hot right now.
I hate to say it...but I fear that the "perpetual license" is mostly done for at this point. Everyone and their dog has a subscription version of their software now, and it's exceedingly rare to find pretty much anything that isn't either $X/month or "Free but laden with upsells/IAPs".
When you can charge a recurring price for software, even if the user is running it on their own hardware, why stick to one-time sales and hope they'll upgrade the next time there's a release? I mean...as much as it's my prefer
Microsoft 365 Copilot (Score:2)
Paid Access sounds GREAT! (Score:2)
If you have to pay to get it, all the better to keep it the fuck away from me!
Step in the right direction (Score:2)
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As a business user (office worker type), I'm actually pretty excited to have it do first drafts of emails/powerpoints, summarize a long teams or email thread for me, etc.
It looks to me like it will bring more context into conversations and save some drudgery while getting you past the "writers block" on communications because you simply don't have time to go dig up all the past conversations about this topic over the last 6 months with the person/company you're trying to respond to.
I'm super stoked and hop
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Being able to use the software to summarize stuff (it's potentially useful for anything long) is a primary case for sure. But it also has to run entirely on my computer (or in one's enterprise) and I have to be confident it's not sending my data home, i.e. the opposite of most relevant offerings.
Will it finally fix language detection? (Score:2)
Because I am really, really tired to tell the broken MS Word and PowerPoint crap-code for every paragraph and every element of a slide that no, it is not English, it is German and yes, all defaults and all setting already say to prioritize German. One English word and it stupidly thinks everything must of course be English.
No? No fixes, just more stupidity? Then I am not interested.