Microsoft introduces AI to Office 365, including Word, Excel and Outlook

Microsoft is upgrading its Office 365 applications using artificial intelligence in order to bring new capabilities to the platforms. The purpose of such is to use machine learning to help users improve productivity and efficiency in the workplace.

Several new capabilities have already been added to Office 365 throughout the years, such as Outlook’s ability to schedule meetings and automatically detect trips and deliveries introduced this year, or last year’s advanced data transformation addition to Excel.

Now, Microsoft Word users will be able to enjoy the new ‘Acronyms’ features, utilising AI that will learn based on information shared within the individual’s organisation to better define acronyms and improve access to those points on the page.

Outlook will benefit from Cortana integration on the mobile application, helping with better push notifications to manage time and appointments. The application will also get a new interface that automatically offers different responses to varying questions within emails, rather than the standard singular response.

Excel is getting a preview of ‘Insights’, a feature that highlights patterns and trends to offer graphs, charts and other data based the information included. This is an attempt to offer an alternative perspective on data and, again, speed up the workflow.

While the new features will be rolled out to a limited number of people for testing, Microsoft has its sights set on a much broader user base, making the AI “accessible to every developer and organisation” down the line.

This does require users to make use of its online cloud, which Microsoft seems to be pushing quite heavily when it isn’t goofing up on its presentations.

KitGuru Says: This hopefully makes life a lot easier for those that use Microsoft’s online services. I personally work offline, so as to avoid the difficulties if the online world messes up. What do you think of Microsoft’s AI-powered Office features?

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