As expected, Microsoft is now testing its generative AI-based Copilot features in its popular Teams online conference services. Today, as part of Microsoft Inspire 2023, the company revealed plans to incorporate Copilot for both Teams phone and Teams chat.
In a blog post, Microsoft described the features that Copilot will bring to Teams phone users:
With this new capability, you can make and receive calls from your Teams app on any device and get real-time summarization and insights. You can also ask Copilot to draft notes for you during the call and highlight key points, such as names, dates, numbers, and tasks using natural language commands.
Copilot can be used with both VoIP and PSTN calls, according to Microsoft. Microsoft also talked about how Copilot will be used in Teams chat:
With Copilot in Teams chat, you can quickly synthesize key information from your chat threads – allowing you to ask specific questions (or use one of the suggested prompts) to help get caught up on the conversation so far, organize key discussion points, and summarize information relevant to you. Copilot reduces the effort of managing different chats and helps you spend more time on the things that matter, without interrupting the flow of your work.
Microsoft offered some examples of how Copilot could be used in Teams Chat. That included using the AI to take certain info from the chat and create a table with lists of certain issues that were brought up in the chat session. Users could also ask Copilot to alert them to issues that are specific to them inside the chat without having to ask others in the chat for that info.
Currently, Copilot in both Microsoft Teams Phone and chat is available for customers who are involved in the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access program. There's no word yet on when it will become generally available, but it is expected to officially launch sometime later this fall.
