Microsoft Customers Pause on Office AI Assistant Due to Budgets, Bugs
A Microsoft effort to inject AI into Excel, Word and PowerPoint has so far met a lukewarm response from customers due to performance and cost issues. Still, many remain optimistic about future improvements.
Microsoft’s vision of using artificial intelligence to take some of the drudgery out of creating spreadsheets, documents and slide presentations is running into snags at businesses like Ascendion, a technology consulting firm.
The firm has about 100 employees testing a Microsoft AI feature known as 365 Copilot that automates tasks in Microsoft 365, the suite of applications, formerly known as Office, that includes Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The AI does a good job of summarizing recordings of meetings and drafting emails based on short written prompts, said Viral Tripathi, Ascendion’s chief information officer.