Microsoft has unveiled its new business-oriented AI, Copilot Pages, which is the company’s version of an arena for “multiplayer AI collaboration.” The idea is that Copilot Pages will allow users to use the Copilot chatbot and plug its answers onto a new page so several users can edit them simultaneously.
Jared Spataro, the corporate vice president of AI work at Microsoft, explained that:
“You and your team can work collaboratively on a page with Copilot, seeing everyone’s work in real-time and iterating with Copilot like a partner, adding more content from your data, files, and the web to your Page.”
Spataro claimed that this is an entirely different work pattern because it combines several humans working together in real-time with artificial intelligence.
The new AI features will be available to all Microsoft 365 users on September 16th
The rollout of Copilot Pages will begin on Monday, September 16th, but it is expected to be available to all Microsoft 365 subscribers later this month. Microsoft is attempting to keep the momentum going and build on its collaborative work platform Loop, which is a Notion productivity software competitor.
The whole point of Copilot Pages is to make AI and collaborative work between humans far more intuitive. This is why the platform is heavily focused on user-friendliness. Copilot Pages users will be able to share their documents through a single link, and colleagues who access it can immediately start editing them like they would a Word or Google document.
The platform is also meant to seamlessly work together with Microsoft’s BizChat, which is a work hub fully integrated with Copilot. This would allow users to embed data from the internet onto the Copilot Pages canvas and create project plans, meeting notes, and even business pitches.
Copilot Pages is expected to be made available to almost 400 million people who will be able to access the company’s free Copilot chatbot when signed in with a business Microsoft Entra account. The tech giants are clearly trying to push Copilot to the forefront of business-related AI applications.
Do we really need Copilot Pages?
Industry analysts suggest that this push might only be successful if users also use Microsoft 365 frequently since Copilot Pages essentially relies on work teams using that program and its apps in the first place.
In other words, Microsoft may need to focus on competing with Google Docs, as many users prefer it due to its lack of a subscription requirement and its overall user-friendliness compared to Microsoft 365. This is because most users have Gmail accounts rather than Outlook accounts.
What is true, however, is the fact that most corporate accounts are indeed Outlook accounts, and thus it makes sense for the company to take advantage of its corporate subscriber base to push its AI collaborative work features.
It remains to be seen whether these improvements might not only help Microsoft knock Google docs off their perch, but whether they can do the same to rival collaborative work platform Notion.
