After reports of Microsoft planning to incorporate the OpenAI software poweringChatGPT into Bing, the company’s search engine, there are fresh reports from The Information about the technology being experimented in Word, PowerPoint and Outlookapps.
The report says that Microsoft has reportedly been using the technology to improve Outlook search results and is now looking at how AI models could suggest replies to emails or recommend document changes to improve Word users’ writing. Is it just an experiment or will these features get incorporated? Nobody knows.
We are talking of something that’s far bigger than Clippy, Microsoft’s user interface agent that came bundled with Microsoft Office in 1997. The Bill Gates-launched product appeared like a big-eyed paperclip to say things like, “It looks like you’re writing a letter. Would you like help?” Clippy, of course, wasn’t successful and became a retro sticker in Teams in 2021. ChatGPT is far bigger.
Tech investor Puneet Kumar has tweeted: “ChatGPT + Microsoft Word/ Powerpoint/Excel/ Outlook will be crazy powerful. Microsoft can sell this as an add-on to the Office and monetise significantly in no time. This will further deepen the moats of Microsoft into the enterprise and personal software world.”
The problem with ChatGPT is accuracy. It is often completely off the mark with answers and tends to offer information that appears dated.
If ChatGPT gets incorporated into Bing, it may make Google uncomfortable in the short run as Alphabet, its parent company, has seen advertising revenue growth slow significantly.
Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI back in 2019.