Microsoft Outlook to Soon Support AI-Powered Email Composition
-
With Microsoft expanding the rollout of AI tools for enterprise users, AI may soon draft more corporate emails in Microsoft Outlook.
The Microsoft 365 Copilot tool, described by the company as 'your everyday AI companion,' will assist users in composing emails to 'keep your sentences concise and error-free.' The tool can also summarize lengthy email threads to quickly draft suggested replies.
Users with Microsoft 365 Personal or Family subscriptions will receive enhanced AI assistance through Microsoft Editor, an intelligent writing assistant. According to a September blog post by Microsoft, this update will include suggested edits for 'clear, concise, and inclusive language' to help employees create more 'polished and professional' emails.
Microsoft stated that the tool will become available to more enterprise customers starting November 1. It has already been tested for several months with clients including Visa, General Motors, KPMG, and Lumen Technologies.
In March, Microsoft outlined its plans to integrate artificial intelligence into its most well-known office tools, including Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, and Word, promising to transform the way millions of people work every day. This AI assistant addition will assist with editing, summarizing, creating, and comparing documents, powered by the same technology behind ChatGPT.
Beyond drafting emails, Microsoft 365 users can also summarize meetings and generate suggested follow-up tasks, request specific charts in Excel, and convert Word documents into PowerPoint presentations in seconds.
Enterprise customers will also gain access to Microsoft 365 Chat (formerly Business Chat), a tool that scans the internet and employees' emails, meetings, chats, and files, acting as a personalized assistant.
This expansion comes less than a year after OpenAI publicly released the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT, which amazed users with its ability to generate original articles, stories, and song lyrics based on prompts. The initial excitement around this tool reignited competition among tech companies to develop and deploy similar AI technologies.
Since then, many other companies have introduced features supporting or resembling this technology. For example, Microsoft's competitor Google has also integrated AI into its productivity tools, including Gmail, Sheets, and Docs.