Microsoft's Sneak Peek into AI Future

A couple months ago, ChatGPT went viral and took the world by storm. The system's ability to understand and respond to "natural language" prompts has made AI easily available to the masses and provides a peek into what an AI-enabled future might look like. However, anyone who has played with ChatGPT for any length of time knows that it is not fully developed yet.

While the OpenAI consortium is hard at work improving ChatGPT, companies like Microsoft are pushing the envelope to try to commercialize it. Microsoft's most prominent announcement was the integration of a beta version of Bing that is ChatGPT enabled. This one has caused quite a stir because users have been able to "trick" the AI into making all sorts of outrageous statements. But if Microsoft can figure it out before Google can get its AI (Bard) out the door, it could spell the end of Google's dominance in online search.

Another interesting AI development at Microsoft is the announcement of the public preview integration of ChatGPT with Microsoft Sales Viva. Sales Viva is the latest evolution of a sales enablement tool that combines Dynamics 365, Outlook, and Teams. A few weeks ago, Microsoft added the ability in Outlook for Sales Viva to read an email, present related information in Teams and Dynamics, and automatically prepare for the user suggested responses fueled by ChatGPT. In this early release, the responses are not the greatest. But they serve as a useful starting point for many emails and will certainly save sellers time. I can definitely see in the near future an "augmented" sales approach where AI is handling the majority of the administrative tasks in the sales cycle, filtering out the "tire-kickers" and automating the "sure things" so that professional sellers can focus on closing truly competitive deals.

It will be really fun when somebody (probably Microsoft) comes out with an AI-enabled tool that will respond to the AI-generated emails from the sellers…one AI will be selling to another AI. However, this has already happened…in 2017 (back when the iPhone had a home button), Facebook, in conjunction with the Georgia Institute of Technology, built an AI-driven chatbot and taught it how to negotiate. There were two very interesting findings…first was that the chatbots learned how to lie (i.e., learned, not were programmed). And when the buying and selling chatbots were talking to each other, they invented a new language to negotiate more efficiently…and remember that was 6 years ago.

Some other interesting developments that are publicly available (in preview) from Microsoft also give an even deeper peek into our AI-enabled future…

Microsoft Power Automate now comes with a feature that enables a user to create a Power Automate Flow using Natural Language. So I can create the Flow by typing, "I want the system to send a notification through Microsoft Teams to the Account Manager 45 days before the Contract expires." Today, the system will create the outline of the flow, but not the details. So currently, it would not know how to find 45 days from contract expiration. But when the feature is generally available in May, I expect that it will be really close. And even if the AI-driven tool does not get me all the way there, it makes creating Flows way more accessible to non-tech users and it makes it significantly faster for anyone.

But play this one forward a little bit…say 2 or 3 years…maybe 5…I can see a future where configuring your CRM is done 80% through natural language conversation. The configuration teams won't need to know where every setting is in the system configuration, rather they will just tell the system using natural language what the CRM needs to do, and the system will configure itself.

Another new feature from Microsoft is the Teams Meeting Summary. Most of us have probably seen the automatic transcription in Teams meetings, which is getting really good…and can even translate on the fly. The Meeting Summary feature will keep the recording from the call and automatically generate a recap of the meeting that includes the list of participants, meeting highlights, a list of follow-up items, and a list of "mentions" that will allow you to click on the topic and go right to that part of the audio recording. The feature will also monitor sentiment throughout the call, so as a reviewer or manager, you can see when things got tense and how the call was turned around.

This is all pretty cool stuff but still in its infancy. There is a lot that it does not do just yet. But when I play this forward, I see a future where your Microsoft subscription (premium, of course) will include a full-on AI personal assistant that will listen to all of your calls, read (and maybe respond to) your emails, take notes, create action items, give you advice, and maybe even alert your manager when you are getting stressed…if privacy rules allow that one.

My intent was not for this to be a Microsoft advertisement, but rather to show how close AI is to fundamentally changing the way we work. Some of it is frankly a bit spooky. But it is coming, and what I described here is just the tip of the iceberg…and it is going to move faster than we expect. So my advice to anyone in business…pay attention! Experiment!

(Professionally proofread by ChatGPT!)