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☆ Microsoft made cuts to its Teams chat app to focus on its Copilot AI tools, leaked memo shows
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-01 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Read previewMicrosoft reorganized teams under Jared Spataro, its head of "AI at Work," shifting focus to its Copilot AI products and reducing the number of employees working on its Teams chat app, according to an excerpt of an internal memo shared with Business Insider. "In early 2022, we recognized the pandemic as a once-in-a-generation opportunity and we surged on Teams to win," Spataro wrote. AdvertisementMicrosoft spokesman Frank Shaw confirmed Spataro is putting more resources behind Copilot, but said Teams remains a core priority and Copilot is a part of Teams. Copilot for Teams, Shaw said, is the company's most used and loved Copilot according to customer surveys and research and will continue to be a focus of future investments. Microsoft is leaning into the potential of its new Copilot tools, built on OpenAI's GPT models, which so far have mixed feedback from customers.

Persons: —, Jared Spataro, Spataro, Colette Stallbaumer, Frank Shaw, Shaw, OpenAI's, Ashley Stewart, Axel Springer Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Business

☆ Microsoft customers complain Copilot doesn't work as well as ChatGPT. Microsoft says they're not using it right.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-28 | by ( Ashley Stewart | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +6 min

ChatGPT, OpenAI's artificial-intelligence chatbot, has set relatively high expectations for customers who are now trying out Microsoft Copilot tools for the first time. Feedback for the tool has been mixed to leaning positive so far, according to the Microsoft employees who spoke with BI. But Microsoft employees told BI the comparisons with ChatGPT kept coming up. Advertisement'Work' Copilot vs. 'web' CopilotA source of customer confusion is that there's a "work" version of Copilot for Microsoft 365 and a "web" version of the tool. For instance, a Microsoft customer may use the web version of Copilot to search publicly available information about a client.

Persons: —, ChatGPT, they're, ChatGPT Copilot, that's, Jared Spataro, Copilots, Spataro Organizations: Service, Microsoft, Business, SharePoint, Copilot

☆ College tour season is about to kick off. Here are 10 tips from college tour guides to have a successful campus visit.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-20 | by ( Pamela Brill | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

To make the most of your visit, Business Insider spoke with college students and tour guides. Here are the dos and don'ts of college tours from student guides. Related storiesStudents can comfortably ask questions without a parent present and compare notes afterward. But some topics are off-limits, so don't ask your tour guide about their SAT scores, ACT scores, or what they wrote about in their essay. Your tour may be over, but you can still learn other ways to immerse yourself in college life.

Persons: —, Skyler Kawecki, Emily Bone, Henry Millar, College of William & Mary, Nathan Weisbrod, Halle, Julian Jacklin, Lorenzo Mars, Thomas Elias, it's, Connor Gee, Emily Balda Organizations: Service, Business, Sarah Lawrence College, Fairleigh Dickinson, Fairleigh Dickinson University, College of William &, Wesleyan University, Bucknell University, Reed College, Pepperdine University, University of Scranton, University of Mississippi, Seton Hall University Locations: New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Connecticut, Oregon, California, Pennsylvania

☆ Microsoft's pricey AI assistant Copilot is giving some early adopters buyer's remorse
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-13 | by ( Geoff Weiss | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Some early adopters of Microsoft's AI assistant, Copilot, are less than impressed, the Wall Street Journal reports. The first users balked at the hefty costs and said the AI would hallucinate wrong answers. AdvertisementMicrosoft is making a big bet on AI with its newly launched generative AI assistant Copilot, but some early adopters have been less than impressed. Others said the AI hallucinated wrong answers or calculated spreadsheets wrong, according to the outlet. And earlier this month, the techgiant rolled out Copilot internally, Business Insider's Ashley Stewart reported at the time.

Persons: —, Copilot, Copilot —, It's, wasn't, Jared Spataro, Spataro, Insider's Ashley Stewart, Satya Nadella Organizations: Wall Street, Microsoft, Service, Excel, Chemicals, Dow, Lenovo, Super Locations: Copilot, OpenAI

☆ Microsoft announces more Copilot AI features in Outlook, PowerPoint and Teams
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-15 | by ( Jordan Novet | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a slew of new capabilities coming to the Copilot artificial intelligence add-on for its Microsoft 365 productivity applications. There are concerns about whether Copilot for Microsoft 365 is worth $30 per person per month. Copilot will be able to create Teams chat messages and come up with tone changes. During Teams meetings, the Whiteboard tool can automatically create visualizations of ideas that people discuss. In PowerPoint, Copilot will be able to create slides that include AI-generated images based on brand assets, with the help of the Microsoft Designer app.

Persons: OpenAI, Jared Spataro, Dana Organizations: Microsoft, Wednesday, Adobe, Google, CNBC Locations: Seattle

☆ Microsoft’s Hotly Anticipated Generative AI Work Assistant Set to Debut
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-31 | by ( Isabelle Bousquette | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

“We are using this AI inflection point to redefine our role,” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, after the company’s recent results. Photo: annegret hilse/ReutersStarting Wednesday, businesses gain access to Microsoft ’s enterprise Copilot, one of the highest-profile AI tools to hit the market. CIOs say they are brushing up on employee training and building business cases to ensure executive buy-in on the tool. Copilot leverages generative AI across the Microsoft 365 suite by doing most things you might ask a business assistant to do, like summarizing video calls, writing draft responses to emails, and transforming Word documents into PowerPoint presentations, said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of Modern Work and Business Applications at Microsoft.

Persons: ”, Satya Nadella, annegret, Jared Spataro Organizations: Microsoft, Modern

☆ CIOs Assess Whether Microsoft’s AI Copilot Justifies Premium Price
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-31 | by ( Isabelle Bousquette | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

“We are using this AI inflection point to redefine our role,” said Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, after the company’s recent results. Photo: annegret hilse/ReutersAfter months of speculation about how generative AI might transform business, Microsoft is poised to make its AI Copilot available through its 365 platform, a test of whether CIOs believe the technology will generate enough value to justify a premium price. CIOs say they are eager to test out the AI assistant, even though the cost is a consideration for some. Copilot leverages generative AI across the Microsoft 365 suite by doing most things you might ask a business assistant to do, like summarizing video calls, writing draft responses to emails and transforming Word documents into PowerPoint presentations, said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of Modern Work and Business Applications at Microsoft.

Persons: ”, Satya Nadella, annegret, CIOs, Jared Spataro Organizations: Microsoft, Modern

The company also said it would make a more secure version of its Bing search engine available immediately to businesses, aiming to address their data-protection concerns, grow their interest in AI and compete more with Google. The voluntary upgrade is on top of publicly listed, monthly plans ranging from $12.50 per user to $57, meaning the copilot could triple costs for some Microsoft customers. Unlike the public Bing that millions of web surfers have accessed in recent months, the enterprise version will not allow any viewing or saving of user data to train underlying technology. Asked if Bing users were unprotected until now, Spataro said Microsoft had made its privacy policies clear and was eager to bring AI to consumers. It may also draw customers to Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI upgrade giving access to business data and compliance controls.

Persons: Jared Spataro, Spataro, Bing, Jeffrey Dastin, Stephen Coates Organizations: Microsoft, Google, Bing Chat, Thomson Locations: copilot, Palo Alto, Calif

☆ Here are Friday's biggest analyst calls: Apple, Nvidia, First Republic, Whirlpool, Meta, FedEx & more
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-17 | by ( Michael Bloom | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

Here are Friday's biggest calls on Wall Street: JPMorgan upgrades Chubb to overweight from neutral JPMorgan said the insurance company is defensive. CFRA upgrade Whirlpool to buy from hold CFRA said in its upgrade of the stock that shares are attractive. Citi initiates Bumble as buy Citi said the dating app continues to take market share. Citi reiterates Nvidia as buy Citi said it's bullish on Nvidia's adoption of AI. Citi reiterates Meta as buy Citi said it likes Meta's improved operating leverage. "

☆ Microsoft adds OpenAI technology to Word and Excel
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-16 | by ( Jonathan Vanian | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

Photographer: Charles Pertwee/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesMicrosoft is bringing generative artificial intelligence technologies like the popular ChatGPT chatting app to its Microsoft 365 suite of business software. features, dubbed Copilot, will be available in some of the company's most popular business apps like Word, PowerPoint and Excel. The Copilot technology is built upon a type of artificial intelligence software known as a large language model, or LLM. Microsoft executives demonstrated some of the capabilities of its Copilot tool on Thursday during an online presentation. In February, Microsoft debuted a new version of its Bing search engine that included a chatbot powered by OpenAI's GPT-4 language technology.

☆ Tesla workers reportedly say the company tracks their keystrokes to make sure they're actively working, the latest complaint of workplace monitoring
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( Grace Kay | Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Tesla workers in New York say their keystrokes are monitored to ensure they're actively working, Bloomberg reported. The workers emailed Elon Musk to inform him they were campaigning for a union, the publication said. Insider reported last year that Tesla began tracking workers' office attendance using an automated system to track when staff badged in or out of its offices. Last year, The New York Times reported that about eight out of the ten largest private US employers track staff productivity. Do you work for Tesla or have some insight to share?

☆ FASB to Expand Use of Accounting Method to More Tax-Credit Investments
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( Mark Maurer | ) www.wsj.com time to read: +4 min

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is moving to permit companies to apply a certain accounting method to more tax-credit investments, enabling them to record similar spending in a consistent way. Federal and state governments offer tax-credit programs to encourage investment in areas such as affordable housing, community development and clean energy. In recent years, more businesses have invested in renewable-energy tax credits as investors push them to boost corporate sustainability efforts. PREVIEWThe FASB, which sets accounting standards for U.S. companies, on Wednesday voted to allow companies to use this amortization method for any tax-credit investments that meet certain criteria. Bank of America Corp. said in October it was concerned that the proposal was too narrow and that it wouldn’t meet the FASB’s goal of having similar accounting rules for similar tax-credit structures.

☆ Julio Torres Thinks Most Comedy Is Too Easy
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-10 | by ( David Marchese | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +11 min

Mamadi Doumbouya for The New York Times Talk Julio Torres Thinks Most Comedy Is Too Easy“I think with me,” Julio Torres says, “it’s like I have some things that I want to show people that are incidentally funny. That’s if, as Torres suggests, comedy is even what he’s doing. I don’t think of comedians as always the most self-assured people. Torres with Cassandra Ciangherotti in “Los Espookys.” Pablo Arellano Spataro/HBOA lot of your comedy pivots on characters having an epiphany. But I feel it behooves me to learn more about the way things are made, the systems, the hierarchies, the business part of show business.

☆ Microsoft executives say it's 'wrong' for managers to spy on remote employees' mouse clicks and keystrokes: 'That's measuring heat rather than outcome'
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-22 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said managers are plagued by "productivity paranoia" amid remote work. NYT previously reported some companies are measuring key strokes and mouse click to spy on staff. "Leaders think their employees are not productive, whereas employees think they are being productive and in many cases even feel burnt out," Nadella said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Thursday. The publication detailed multiple methods companies had employed to measure workers' productivity, from tracking mouse clicks and keystrokes to having staff take random photos to insure the workers were at their computers. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that workers have been turning down raises in favor of working from home.

☆ 85% of managers still don't trust that their employees are actually working remotely, even though virtual meetings and hours worked have ballooned
▼ + stars: | 2022-09-22 | by ( Sawdah Bhaimiya | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Employees don't feel the same, finding their schedules filled with more meetings and email demands. Some 85% of leaders say the shift to hybrid work means they can't tell if their workers are actually doing any work, according to a Microsoft survey released today. Microsoft used its own workplace tools, such as Teams, to look at whether remote and hybrid employees are actually doing more or less work. A separate survey by Beamery this year found more than two-thirds of employees think their boss views them as less productive when they're working from home. But economists tend to disagree and say that employees are actually working harder remotely.

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