OpenAI’s GPT for Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint is being considered by Microsoft

According to reports, Microsoft has been considering how to incorporate OpenAI’s GPT functionality into Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint.
It’s been rumored that Microsoft has been testing the integration of OpenAI’s language AI technology into its Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook programs. According to The Information, Microsoft has been striving to further integrate the text-generating GPT model from OpenAI into Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook. It has previously integrated an unidentified version of the model into Word’s autocomplete tool.

According to reports, Microsoft has been enhancing Outlook search results using OpenAI’s GPT technology so users may locate what they’re searching for without having to search using keywords in emails. Microsoft is rumored to have investigated how these AI models could propose email responses or document revisions to help Word users write better. It’s unclear if Microsoft intends to release these capabilities or if they’re currently only being tested.

Outlook might create complete emails based on basic queries if Microsoft leans more toward incorporating features seen in ChatGPT, the conversational AI that made news last year. Imagine Outlook simply responding to your request to “write an email to my team indicating I’m out sick” by sending an email to your coworkers. According to reports, Microsoft also intends to introduce a version of Bing that responds to search inquiries using ChatGPT. In an effort to make Bing more competitive with Google, this new functionality may become accessible as early as March.
Adding more sophisticated AI text-generation features to Microsoft’s productivity programs will be a difficult task. The most important one is precision. Any kind of document generation or sophisticated integration would be challenging because ChatGPT still has a propensity to offer false information as fact.

Privacy is another big problem. Microsoft will need to alter its models so that users’ data isn’t compromised. According to The Information, Microsoft has been developing privacy-preserving models using GPT-3 and the GPT-4 standard, which has not yet been made public. According to reports, Microsoft researchers have had some early success training big language models using sensitive information.

These models might be used by Microsoft to extract and condense data from Teams Meeting transcripts, then incorporate images created by OpenAI’s Dall-E 2 image generating model into PowerPoint presentations. It’s been stated that researchers have shown Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, their work on Office integration, although it’s unclear if and when these GPT- or Dall-E 2-powered models will be included in Office products.

Microsoft’s productivity programs already make use of a range of AI. Microsoft Teams employs AI to reduce echo, interruptions, and acoustics, Word and PowerPoint use AI algorithms to automatically propose image and slide deck descriptions, and two years ago, Microsoft created an AI-powered code completion for GPT-3. By utilizing AI for text predictions, grammar checks, and spellchecking, Microsoft Editor also improves your writing.

After investing $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019, Microsoft acquired an exclusive license to the underlying technology of GPT-3 in 2020. Since then, it has developed a close partnership with OpenAI, and it has ambitions to integrate a DALL-E 2 driven AI text-to-image model into Bing.

On stage at CES last week, Panos Panay, the head of Microsoft’s Windows and Surface, declared that “AI is going to redefine how you do everything on Windows.” The new Surface smart camera is just one example of how Microsoft’s Surface team is eager to create new hardware to benefit from AI. In a recent interview with Verge, several members of the Surface team talked about the influence AI will have on Windows and hardware.

It would be a swift commercialization of OpenAI’s GPT models if Microsoft moved forward with GPT-powered versions of Word, Outlook, and PowerPoint. Bing is destined to soon join PowerApps, Microsoft’s first GPT-based commercial application, with its own AI-driven search results. The incorporation of OpenAI’s language models into Office and Bing would put a lot of pressure on Google, the market leader in search and a company that has been making headway with its Workspace products to businesses.