Source: https://shorturl.at/WjhEl
The Copilot Wave 2 will go beyond individual productivity to business productivity, said Rajesh Jha, global EVP, Experience and Devices at Microsoft. “We’re not building AI for social media or a commerce site. Copilot is a trusted AI companion for human agency, both as an assistant or at work,” said Jha (51) who has been leading Office 365, Teams & Bing through his 18-year journey at Microsoft and is a key member of the Satya Nadella clan.
“The first chapter of AI was bringing AI into people’s existing workflows. The second chapter is a new AI. With Copilot we have now created a new user interface for AI where chat, search, documents, collaboration have come together with Copilot pages.”
Last month, Microsoft unveiled Copilot Pages, a new collaborative platform which uses Copilot Bizchat to pull insights web and work data into a single shareable document.
He calls India as a “AI-forward nation” and wants to strengthen its partner ecosystem through tech companies like HCL, Infosys, Cognizant, L&T, because, “for every dollar we make out of Copilot, our partners can make $8 to $10 more,” he said. Copilot has witnessed a 10x increase in usage in the last six months.
“We really want to partner with the ecosystem in India to make India an AI-first country, an AI-first economy. Infosys disclosed they have 18,000 engineers using GitHub Copilot generating 7 million lines of code.”
“…they (tech companies) are not only leading with Copilot themselves for their own transformation, they work with customers around the globe. And so for every dollar we make out of Copilot, our partners can make $8 to $10 more out of that because they understand the unique solutions that customers need. Whether these workflows are in healthcare or financial services, these are the partners that are supporting companies around the globe,” the executive said.
He said that projects like Jugalbandhi, Bhashini, Shiksha Copilot and Microsoft’s commitment to skill 2 million people in AI by 2025 are some of the efforts that the company is making to advance AI in the region.
Given India’s diversity of languages and the digitization happening here is applicable to multilingual regions like Europe in many ways. “We’re excited to work with companies like Sarvam AI, which is building an Indic LLM,” Jha said.
When asked about data security and privacy, Jha explained that Copilot’s architecture is robust. “Remember, it’s my Copilot working on my behalf. And so, it has my permission. So as an employee at Microsoft, I have access to my emails, group documents, business systems.”
As for devices, Jha remarked that the future of AI will run both on the edge and the cloud. “There will be a set of AI that can only run in the cloud and a set of AI that should run on the cloud because the performance, the latency, the business model lends differently.”
He added that there is increased preference among enterprise customers to buy Microsoft’s AI Copilot+ PCs because of its capabilities or running applications on the edge.
“A Copilot PC is the best video conferencing device. Very fluid performance. No battery life drainage because the AI is running on custom silicon, it’s not running on the CPU or the GPU. For consumers, the ability to have things like AI built into your Paint app, your photos application and the integration of Copilot right into the PC. Those are scenarios that really resonate.”
GreyMatterz Thought:
Microsoft’s Copilot Wave 2 aims to enhance business productivity, focusing on empowering users at work with trusted AI support. It’s all about making AI a reliable assistant for meaningful tasks, not just for social media or e-commerce.
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