😺 Microsoft Copilot

PLUS: déjà vu

Welcome, humans.

Elon Musk wants 25% voting control of Tesla to continue building AI products inside the company. Hopefully, this doesn’t inspire every Joe Schmo with a smidgen of prompt engineering expertise to march into their boss’s office demanding a raise!

Here’s what you need to know about AI today:

Individuals can access Microsoft’s new AI features via Copilot Pro.
Microsoft Copilot shines in Outlook and Word (Excel, not so much).
The % of PR pros using AI skyrocketed last year from 28% to 64%.
OpenAI is developing AI tools with the US DoD.

Microsoft Copilot is here for everyone.

Microsoft Copilot, the eagerly anticipated AI tools for Office apps like Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook, is finally available for ALL businesses and users.

We already gave the new tools a whirl—here’s our honest review:

Copilot Chat (prev. Bing): Solid ChatGPT-style chatbot that meshes with your files (“summarize key points from [Word doc]”) and emails (“summarize my emails”), though it stops short of creating files from scratch.

SO true

Copilot in Outlook: GREAT for summarizing emails and drafting replies. BUT, drafting emails from scratch tends to demand more work than it’s worth. Plus, it leans towards a formal tone, so if casual is your vibe, make that clear.

Copilot in PowerPoint: It can whip up B+ presentations from scratch or Word docs (just Word for now) in about 45 seconds.

Surprisingly handy for starting 80% of your typical work presentations with enough prompting (mostly because starting slides from scratch sucks!), but you’ll still run into a lot of silly errors.

Guido Appenzeller

Copilot in Word: We're still waiting to try this one, but Prof Mollick characterizes it as a “friendlier (but less powerful) way to get ChatGPT-4 to do writing for you.”

Copilot in Excel: not very useful yet.

TLDR: if you’re comfortable with AI not being perfect, try Copilot Pro first for a month, then consider the business license (which is billed yearly). But, the product is still early goings—feel free to check in later in the year, too.

All these features are offered in a mish-mosh of plans that can get pretty confusing—here’s a no-nonsense guide:

Copilot: a free way to Copilot chat (previously known as Bing). Highly recommend if you *don’t* already pay for ChatGPT+.
Copilot Pro (NEW): all the mentioned features plus a new GPT builder for $20/month. Use instead of ChatGPT+ if you work with Office 365 apps frequently.
Copilot for Microsoft 365: all the new features for Microsoft teams of all sizes with enhanced security/privacy at $360/person/year. Made for businesses!

Microsoft

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AI is boosting productivity, but it’s being kept a secret.

Muck Rack surveyed 1,001 PR (=Public Relations) professionals and the results confirm trends we’ve observed across most companies.

AI usage has skyrocketed. The # of PR pros who use AI to write leaped from 28% in March to 64% in November.

It’s creating moderate productivity gains. 52% of PR pros say AI has increased their quality of work; 1% said it made quality decline.

AI is an aid, not a replacement. 95% of people say they edit AI’s output, with 61% making edits to “most of the text”.

They’re not telling anyone. Only 19% of PR pros expect to always disclose AI use to clients, mirroring broader trends in AI secrecy.

Companies aren’t helping employees. Only 21% of PR pros report their company having a clear policy on AI.

Around the Horn.

lots of cool responses!

The Webby Awards is spotlighting the top AI innovations across 10+ categories—enter for your startup!
Here are 10 teams OpenAI funded to build tools that keep AI in check.
An OpenAI VP said the company is developing tools with the US Defense Department.
46% of CEOs surveyed by PwC expect AI to boost profitability in the next year.
Here are some useful resources for any builders looking for best practices on building with AI.

Wednesday Wirings.

1X, a company that builds robots to meet labor demands, raised $100M.
Sakana, a Japanese AI research lab building a new foundational model, raised $30M.
Ask AI, a customer support assistant for enterprises, raised $11M.
Tab AI, another one of those wearable AI devices, raised $1.9M.