(upbeat music)
- Hello, and welcome to Inside Microsoft Teams.
I'm Derek Snyder.
Today in an event in New York, we made several announcements
around the upcoming capabilities
of Copilot across the Microsoft ecosystem,
and specifically detailed some new scenarios
with Microsoft 365 Copilot,
which is your Copilot for work.
Given the M365 Copilot
will be embedded into Microsoft Teams
and you'll be able to have conversations
with it like any other contact,
it felt like the right time to do a deep dive
with the product team behind this technology.
A.J. and Ryan, welcome to Inside Microsoft Teams.
Let's do a quick lightning intro.
A.J. let's start with you, who are you and what do you do?
- Thanks, Derek, I'm A.J. Brush.
I'm a partner group product manager in M365 Core.
We're the team that works a lot on the graphs.
so all of your emails and calendar and files.
- Hey everyone, great to see you.
I'm actually calling in from Tel Aviv,
where I'm here working with one of
our science and research teams
that does a lot of work behind the scenes
for Copilot across all the M365 experiences.
But I'm a principal product manager on the Teams team.
And I lead a group of wonderful PMs
that deliver our AI experiences in Teams Core,
so chat and channels.
- Awesome, well, I think many of our viewers
have obviously a familiarity at this point,
it's impossible not to, with ChatGPT,
and what generative AI technology does in general.
And let's assume at this point that some,
if not all of them, have seen at least some of the videos
or demos around Copilot
showing up in Teams or in Word or Excel.
But I wanna understand from you specifically,
what are some of the scenarios that you have found so useful
around this Copilot chat experience
that looks across all your business data.
And so A.J. let's start with you.
- Awesome, yeah, it's been quite a journey.
Some things that I thought I would use all the time,
I use maybe less so.
And other things I have discovered I use all the time.
So one of my favorites
is actually before I meet with someone,
I catch up on the latest from them.
And this will go ahead and summarize
if I have emails or chats or they've changed some files.
So it's a great way to make sure
I haven't missed anything that's coming in.
The one that's been a real delighter, though,
is I've discovered that anytime I have a question
that I might have reached out to someone,
I can just ask Copilot.
So for example, people were dropping all these concepts
last week, what's Azure ML?
What's this other thing?
And I could just go ahead and ask Copilot to compare them.
And I got educated myself.
I needed to like make some clickable links
for really glamorous setting up email aliases,
but I couldn't remember how to do it.
I asked Copilot, I got the steps on how to do it.
So it's been really time-saving in that way as well.
- So I mean, from what you just said, I'm sort of...
It's implying that it's actually reasoning
across a variety of your business data.
And then it also sounds like communication modalities.
Can you give a little details around like
what can Copilot see when you're making these queries?
- Yeah, so similar to if I was doing a search,
on office.com or something, Copilot can see my emails,
my Teams chats, files from my business,
and that kind of data that's available there.
So for example, when I mentioned
getting help to set up the email alias,
it's actually also using graph connector data
to see Help content that someone's put up on a wiki,
and pulling that in to look at.
So things that are available to me.
It only has access, it's working on my behalf, right?
So it has access to things I have access to, nothing else.
But it's able to look across in a way
that it would take me a long time to find it
across all those information sources.
- Got it, now Ryan, what's a scenario or a way
in which you're using Copilot that you've been surprised by
or that you're finding you're using all the time these days?
- The really surprising use case
that I've actually enjoyed a lot and use a lot
is kind of a brainstorming collaboration use case.
So if I'm working on kind of a tough problem,
and let's say I've got a document that I'm writing,
I'll insert that document into Copilot.
And then I'll start like asking questions
and kinda going back and forth, and actually having
this kind of collaboration with Copilot.
And it's just a way to kind of help me get unblocked
or think differently about a problem.
And I find it just a really exciting kinda first taste
of what it's like to collaborate with AI.
And I think that's a super powerful aspect
of what we're doing with Copilot
in this kind of conversational context,
that also has access to your work information.
And those two things together are super powerful.
- Wow, let's see a demo.
A.J. can you take us through?
- [A.J.] Yeah, what you see here
is our Try This Prompts experience.
It's very important to give some suggestions so people know,
including me, what you can do with M365 Copilot.
So you can either click on this,
or go ahead down here and type.
I'm gonna use one of my favorites, "What's the latest from"
and I use the little slash to pull up people.
And I can just start typing a name.
So I'm gonna ask what's the latest from Shelly.
I've got a meeting with her later today.
Go ahead and generate the reply.
As you can see, I'm getting some information about Shelly,
and most importantly, the email that she sent me yesterday.
This is also captured in the references.
So I could go ahead and click on this
and go straight to the email.
You know, she's talking about Project Proseware,
and I'd like to find out more about that.
So I'll go ahead and click on one of
these follow-up suggestions,
which again is helping me know what's possible.
Great, so I'm all caught up on Proseware
before my meeting with Shelly,
and I've got some more information.
So this is an example of catching up.
And what's great here is I can catch up across many sources.
One of the other main things
that I use Copilot for is asking questions.
So my friend, or my colleague really, and friend, Ned,
shared some information about a strategy quote.
And I really wanna use it in a document I'm creating.
So I'm gonna ask,
"Where did Ned share a quote from a tech analyst?"
Oh, terrific, it was one of the many Teams chats
that I'm on with Ned.
And if I wanted to, I could go here and open,
and that'll take me directly to the chat, sweet.
Also, in line with this ask,
we've discovered that I can get,
or I can get help explaining complex topics.
So similar to finding this information from Ned,
I can ask Copilot to help me with even more complex topics.
So in this case, I wanna explain semantic indexing
to a CEO that I'm gonna be meeting with.
And I can ask for help with a script.
This is terrific.
I have references again
that I can dig in for more information.
I have some great analogies up here about semantic maps,
and what someone might know about an elephant.
And that's gonna be really relatable.
All right, so we saw how I can do catch up,
how I can ask questions and get help explaining concepts.
Now let's look at creation.
So my team has been working super hard,
getting all of this ready,
along with Ryan's team, for the demo event.
So I'm going to draft a message to the team, thanking them
and encouraging them to take time off after the demo.
Sometimes I need a little help being creative.
So that's great.
I've got a message here that I can personalize.
- Well, A.J. that's really impressive.
But like you obviously have a mastery of these prompts.
What do we do for all the normal people
that don't actually know even where to start with Copilot.
- Yeah, thanks Derek, it's a great question.
It's really important that we make it easy
to know what's possible.
So we've got the Try This Prompts up here,
and you can view more.
The other thing that's always with you,
once you get a bunch of responses, is this Prompt Guide
which has even more ideas, right?
Summarize recent emails about a topic, recap a meeting,
summarize Team messages, my favorite, what's the latest?
You can also create, ask.
So this Prompt Guide travels with you.
It's always here in the input box.
The other thing I wanted to make everyone aware of
is our Attach menu.
So that lets me use people that matter to me,
files, meetings, emails, and makes it really easy to ground,
we call grounding, right?
Ground what I'm asking, and give instructions
to use to summarize or to create
or to rewrite that particular file or recap those meetings.
- Wow, A.J. that was great.
Thank you very much for showing that to us.
Now, Ryan, I'm curious, obviously a lot of the stuff
that A.J. just showed, in fact all of it,
is embedded inside of Teams.
What is the relationship that you have with A.J.'s team?
- Yeah, so in terms of how our teams work together,
I mean, since day zero,
we have been like in lockstep with each other,
both in terms of iterating on scenarios and brainstorming
and coming up with kinda the core value proposition,
and then also implementation wise in our engineering
and design teams, you know, work hand in hand.
But the way that we kind of think about it conceptually
is that the kind of in-app Teams Copilot
is your specialized tool
for what you do in Teams all day long.
And then you have this wonderful entry point
into what you do across the Microsoft 365 suite
through the Copilot entry point.
And you know, we believe that Teams
is the best platform in the world
to talk to your teammates and collaborate.
And it's also the best platform in the world to talk to AI.
And that's the way that we really see
kind of Copilot coming to life in the context of Teams,
as this very, very powerful entry point
into all of your work data,
and then having the kind of in-app Teams Copilot
there for you as you're going about your workday in Teams.
And we see those two things
being very complimentary to each other
as both systems evolve over time.
- And A.J. we've had this out in the wild,
initially with a very small group
of private preview customers,
and now with a much larger group
in our early-access program.
You know, what's the type of feedback
we're getting from customers?
Are there things that they're specifically asking for
that you can share that maybe we're thinking about as well?
What's the feedback been so far?
- It's been so fun to hear from the customers.
This is a unique program,
where we have gone out very early with external customers,
both in a research setting
and then with our EAP, or our preview program.
They have been very gracious,
as things have not always worked perfectly.
And we have learned from that.
In particular, they've really appreciated
the Try These prompts,
anytime we can give suggestions to help guide.
They often look for those catch up scenarios.
And so if the catch up is not working as well as it could,
we certainly hear about that.
And we've taken a lot of that feedback
and really iterated on that What's the Latest prompt,
or you know, help me prep for this meeting.
to really bring in all of the data
from your files or chats or email.
And that's really the strength that we see here,
that you can get that 360 holistic view.
We're also starting to hear,
my favorite thing is people sending me screenshots,
both internally and then sharing externally,
prompts that work well.
So we can even double down on those.
And we've seen a lot of examples in the asking,
but also that kind of collaboration
Ryan was talking about where trying to generate new ideas,
trying to improve that introduction,
trying to just get a fresh perspective when brainstorming.
- Yeah, on the getting new ideas point,
it came to mind that actually there was an internal effort
to start to build a library of the prompts
that are working really well.
And I think, correct me if I'm wrong,
that went into some of the thinking
behind the prompt builder,
and indeed, some of the things you even demoed today
were kind of crowdsourced in a way, is that right?
- That is very true.
One of our favorite things to do right now
is to ask that question when we talk to our field team,
when we talk to our customers, when we talk to ourselves.
And we're all kind of on the discovery together.
What's really cool about the prompt library work
that you just saw, the prompts coming together,
is soon there'll be a way for people
to actually contribute and share,
either with each other,
or more generally with their organization.
That's still all in development.
But it's definitely where we wanna be going.
Because as you discover things that are working well
for your organization or your setup,
the natural thing is to wanna share those with others.
- I'm more interested in your own personal point of view.
We're seeing a lot of generative AI
come to many, many products, especially in the workplace.
And I've observed at least a different point of view, right?
We have Copilot, which is intentionally meant
to keep sort of the human in a loop,
and you're sort of an assistant to the human activity.
But I've also seen other products
that basically use language where the bot, or the AI,
is doing things for you, you know?
I actually saw a headline,
"Send your minion to a meeting" your AI minion.
So you know, I'm curious, each of your perspectives
on where we will end up on that cursor.
Do you think there will be a world where,
you know, we're in a meeting in the future,
and our AI is there representing us?
Or do you feel like it really is
going to stay very much in the world we are right now,
where you're in the background
working with your AI and getting things done,
but fundamentally, your role and your position
in the conversation has not changed?
I'm curious, and again, like we won't hold anybody to this.
It's a little philosophical at this point.
So A.J. do you have a point of view on that?
- You may not know,
but I spent 12 years in Microsoft Research.
And I actually have some public keynotes out there
on sort of personal assistants.
and are we achieving the opportunities,
and some of the tough questions I think are coming.
So this is a great question.
I think it's really a matter of degrees.
Like I don't see an either or.
It's very important that I have trust,
in my assistant, in my colleagues, right?
You don't hire someone on the first day
and send them to a high-stakes meeting and say,
say what A.J. would say, you just don't do that, right?
You don't even hand someone your credit card and say,
go order this for me or any of those things, right?
You learn what your tool is capable,
what your Copilot is capable of, how it could help you.
And then as you gain more trust,
I can see a future where I might
delegate some things to my Copilot, right?
I might say, yeah, can you go to that meeting?
We already do this, right, with the in-meeting Copilot,
hey, can you take some notes?
I'm gonna look at those notes, I'm gonna edit them.
As we become more comfortable
with the notes and what's in them,
we might do less and less editing, right?
I think we're probably a ways off from,
hey, go to this meeting
and if someone asks about this question,
give the response I would give.
That feels like I would have trouble
trusting that for a while until we...
You know, and if we determine
that's the scenario that's gonna help the most,
like we can work towards that type of delegation.
We have some other places where we might delegate sooner,
like when scheduling and other things.
So I do see this continuum
where as my Copilot becomes more capable,
and my trust grows on what's safe to delegate
where I have trust, I'll delegate more.
But that's gonna be a journey for us, I think.
- And maybe I'll just add to that.
You know, from my point of view,
my hope is that the systems that we're developing
really allow us to interact with each other more
in more natural and more productive and creative ways,
and let these AI systems do the things
that maybe distract us and interfere with us connecting.
I used to be a journalist before I got involved in tech.
I actually was a journalist based in Jerusalem here.
And I remember, you know, I would be sitting
and interviewing people, and I'd be sitting
and taking notes, or fuddling with a recorder.
And that would interfere with my ability
to connect with my subject.
So I really see the systems that we're developing
facilitating more human interaction,
more natural human interaction.
And that's what really gets me excited,
especially from the perspective of Teams,
where it's all about helping people connect,
and helping people connect more naturally,
whether they're in the same room together
or they're distributed across the world like we are today.
- Okay, well, thank you so much for your time today.
It was always fun to have this chat.
And thanks A.J. for the demo.
It's great to see this stuff in action.
And kudos so far for all the great work.
And we're looking so forward to when this thing ships
for all of our customers.
So thanks again to you both.
- Thanks Derek.
- For more information, follow the link
on the bottom of the screen
to see all the announcements we made today in New York.
That's it for Inside Microsoft Teams.
Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time.
(gentle music)