From 1st November Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft’s new ChapGPT-style AI assistant, will be embedded into its Office apps and will help to ‘eliminate the drudgery’, as reported by BBC Tech at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-67103536.
That may be all well and good, but let’s hope it is easier to turn off than Microsoft’s OneDrive and Teams integrations which try to force a way of working, using MS tools.
Evidently, MS Copilot will be able to summarise meetings held in Teams for anyone who chooses not to attend (perhaps we will need to start taking a register!), and it can also draft emails, create word documents, spreadsheet graphs, and Powerpoint presentations in moments.
We see a real danger in this, but it is easily fixable. The risk with these new technologies is that people will start using them, with no controls, and they become embedded before you know it. This breaks Europe’s AI Act (which we haven’t signed up to but really should unless we have something similar, and quickly) which states that people must know if they are interacting with a real person or some AI.
We strongly recommend that you create a simple AI policy, saying what technologies are and are not allowed, and how they should be used.
We know a number of you have a simply-docs.co.uk account, in which case there is a good starting point in the Business folder https://simply-docs.co.uk/Generative-AI-Usage-Policy/Generative-AI-Usage-Policy and, having just updated our own policy, you are welcome to book a free 20-minute insight call to talk things through.