As the world goes through economic challenges and changes in work patterns, companies are looking for ways to optimize their IT investments and rekindle their employees’ motivation to achieve their business objectives. To keep up with the fast pace of change, companies require solutions that can improve their productivity, cut costs, and allow them to be more adaptive.
This is where the cutting-edge technology of AI comes in. Microsoft, for instance, is using AI to transform its consumer and enterprise products, including Microsoft Teams, to help individuals and teams work more efficiently.
Previously, Microsoft integrated OpenAI tools with their workplace emails and spreadsheets. Now, Teams Premium will leverage state-of-the-art technology, including OpenAI‘s GPT-3.5-powered Large Language Models, to elevate meetings to new heights of intelligence, personalization, and security.
It’s worth noting that GPT 3.5 is developed by OpenAI, a research institute focused on the advancement of artificial intelligence, while ChatGPT is designed by the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), a non-profit research institute. Since GPT 3.5 has far more parameters than ChatGPT, it’s significantly more capable of handling complex language processing tasks and translations in real time.
With the pandemic forcing an increase of 252% in weekly meeting time over the last two years, Teams is taking action to ease the strain. It is incorporating AI throughout the meeting experience, enabling users to get more done in less time. There are a lot of tasks that require attention during the meeting, and Microsoft states that the integration of AI with Teams will eliminate the extra time that needs to be allotted to those tasks.
Teams Premium will offer intelligent recap, which generates automatically created meeting notes, suggested tasks, and personalized highlights. Team members can easily keep track of the most critical information even if they miss the meeting.
In the future, Teams will add speaker timeline markers that show who spoke, when they spoke, and allow users to jump straight to that moment in the meeting recording. This feature is intelligently organized based on who the team member works with most closely, so they never miss important feedback from their manager.
With AI-generated notes powered by GPT-3.5, members can focus on the meeting itself and not on taking notes. In the near future, key points and takeaways will be displayed after the meeting. AI-generated tasks and action items will also be automatically suggested for follow-up.
Lastly, Teams Premium will also offer live translations for captions in 40 languages, making meetings more productive and effortless for everyone. Only the meeting organizer needs to have Teams Premium for all attendees to enjoy the benefits of real-time translations.
Additionally, team meetings will be more personalized and branded for its members. IT admins will be able to create customized meeting templates to greatly reduce the time and effort required to plan a meeting. Using advanced meeting protection, admins can easily upgrade safeguards to ensure confidential meetings without interfering with the meeting experience.
Microsoft Teams Premium is expected to greatly reduce costs and enhance productivity for its users. The company is offering a free trial of Teams Premium for 30 days. If organizations buy Teams Premium before July 1, 2023, they will be charged $7 per user per month, which is 30 percent off the standard $10 pricing. The integration of AI with Teams is bound to redefine the way meetings are conducted within organizations.
