By Jennifer Yeagley
Once upon a time, we were all told that AI would create living machines that would kill us all or use us as batteries. AI is no longer the villain from yesteryear’s psychological or action thriller. It is here and taking over faster than most technologies do. Why? It is fun, but also really useful! With that combination, who can resist the call of AI?
Microsoft has developed an AI technology that is free and usable by all, and of course, they have also developed more complex versions of the technology for a price. I am digging how cool some of this stuff is. However, I am also highly aware of the impact on various art and work streams. Let’s dig in! I am not here to create an ad for Copilot; even though Eagle Secure Solutions could hook you up (wink, wink, nudge, nudge). I just want to share some of what it currently does so that you can be informed.
To start, I did ask Copilot, the free web version found here, to write a blog about Microsoft Copilot…it didn’t do that. It did give me some key points to include in a blog post. Since it sounded like an ad, I am mostly ignoring that. Then I followed one of the prompts provided, “Write a joke that my coworkers would find funny.” The result was “Why did the computer go to therapy? Because it had too many bytes of emotional baggage!” Arguably, that is another failure. However, the cool thing about Copilot is that it is creating this from a base of language and web grounding. It is an original unfunny joke!
I wanted to create a challenge for Copilot to create a plan for proposing Acronis backups to a small business. Guess what I got…an eight-step plan with items to assess with the company, key ideas and features about Acronis backups, strategies to propose, and plans to demo and implement the software. If that wasn’t something that we already did, I would find this a very useful plan. My final test for the free version was to ask for a visual ad for Eagle Secure Solutions. I must say that these were very impressive even if they weren’t exactly what I wanted. See the images below!
That I can’t play with, but seems amazing, is Copilot for Microsoft 365. From the demos I have seen, the tools can help you organize and respond to emails in Outlook, take notes and summarize meetings in Teams, take your tables and graphs to the next level in Excel, and more. In one demo, I saw a table in Excel that had information that was needed in an email. From the Copilot in Excel, emails were generated from simple prompts. The emails could be copied and sent from Outlook. I watched about 15 minutes of demos and felt strongly that there is a time-saving factor to Copilot. Research also supported that feeling with users claiming an average of 2.5 hours saved monthly. That may not sound like much, but I see potential for way more than that.
Now, let’s talk about that impact on various art and workstreams. It took me less than a minute to generate 4 eagle pictures. Some very artistic people go into making this type of graphic, which will be cheated due to this technology. The pendulum keeps swinging concerning administrative assistants versus managers doing computer tasks. I foresee that we will swing away from administrative assistants again. I am not necessarily seeing a huge loss of jobs from Copilot as it stands now, but the potential is there for the future with this and other AI technologies. However, I also believe that people adapt to new technologies and find ways to grow in ways that create new types of jobs.
I am not the authority by any stretch on AI or Copilot, but I believe we are just on the cusp of using AI tools to improve our productivity. While it will lead to changes in the way we work and the type of work being completed, it is critical to jump on board now. This is a fast-moving technological advancement that will not wait until you are ready. Enjoy the time you have early to play with it rather than waiting until you are in a situation where you must use it or fail.