Windows Copilot Newsletter #17 - Copilot Pro goes global; Designer gets a fix; an Extinction-Level threat?
Windows Copilot Newsletter #17
Microsoft releases Copilot Pro to a global market, Copilot Designer gets guardrails to reign it in, and a group of scientists make a dire prediction...
G'day and welcome to the seventeenth edition of the Windows Copilot Newsletter, where we curate all of the latest and significant news about AI chatbots. Another big week, so we'll dive right in...
Top News
Microsoft releases Copilot Pro globally: With a market reach of 222 nations, Microsoft can 'go global' like few other businesses. Copilot Pro, its subscription-based AI upgrade for Microsoft 365, is now available across all of the software giant's markets - and the first month is free. Read that here.
Microsoft puts guardrails on Copilot Designer: After a whistleblower report demonstrated some serious flaws in Microsoft's image generator, the firm created some restrictions on what could be supplied as prompts. Read about that here - and learn how one user quickly got around those guardrails, here.
Microsoft begins rollout of 'Copilot GPTs': Similar - perhaps even directly copied from - OpenAI's GPTs, GPTs add the ability to customise an AI chatbot around specific knowledge domains, skills, and tone. Microsoft looks to be setting up a commercial exchange of its own GPTs - just like OpenAI. Read about it here.
Google adds Gemini to Sheets: First we had Copilot Pro in Microsoft Excel, now Google has added its Gemini AI chatbot to its own spreadsheet, Sheets. It remains unclear who will be using this feature - or how - as we haven't seen any outstanding examples of how an AI chatbot can aid in analysis. Read that here.
Top Tips
How to use Copilot Pro in PowerPoint: Now that it's in international release, this might be a good moment to learn how Copilot Pro can make creating an effective visual presentation a simple affair. Read how to do that here.
Top 8 ChatGPT Prompts: We love a good listicle.
Safely and Wisely
Bias in OpenAI's recruiting tool: Bloomberg examined a recruiting GPT from OpenAI, used in recruiting - and found it contains substantial biases, based on the candidate's name. Read that story here.
Words that Kill: Another report finds that AI-based sentencing tools will 'judge' a convicted criminal based on their word choices. Choose the wrong words, receive a death sentence. Read that here.
Longreads
AIs that Fake Empathy: We react better to AIs that have been trained to act as though they possess empathy. But is that a good thing? New Scientist investigates.
An Extinction-Level Threat: This rather scary story in TIME breathlessly covers a report about a hypothetical 'extinction-level threat' posed by artificial intelligence. Have a read - do you buy it?
Understanding the Microsoft Copilot Pro Value Proposition
Last month, Drew Smith and I released our first Wisely AI white paper - designed to help organisations evaluate whether the features in Copilot Pro justify handing Microsoft a hefty AUD $45 per month per person subscription fee. Read or download the white paper here.
We're continuing to work on our next white paper - about 'De-Risking AI' - and have a lot more exciting work in the pipeline. More on that next week - when we’ll be back with more AI chatbot news!
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Thanks!
Mark Pesce
mark@markpesce.com // Wisely AI