In Short:
Microsoft is ramping up its AI initiatives with the next phase of Copilot, focusing on enhancing business productivity rather than just individual tasks. Rajesh Jha, a key executive at Microsoft, describes Copilot as a trusted AI companion for the workplace. They’ve introduced Copilot Pages for better collaboration, and Jha aims to strengthen India’s tech ecosystem, promoting AI growth and skills training by 2025.
Microsoft’s AI Advancement
Microsoft is enhancing its artificial intelligence initiatives with the upcoming phase of Copilot, which aims to facilitate a comprehensive transformation across entire businesses, transcending individual productivity. “Copilot Wave 2 will go beyond individual productivity to business productivity,” stated Rajesh Jha, Global EVP of Experience and Devices at Microsoft, according to a report by ET.
Copilot as a Trusted AI Companion
Jha emphasized that Copilot is conceptualized as a reliable AI companion that bolsters human agency within the workplace. He remarked, “We’re not building AI for social media or commerce sites. Copilot is a trusted AI companion for human agency, both as an assistant and in the workplace.” Jha has been with Microsoft for 18 years and oversees essential products such as Office 365, Teams, and Bing. He is a pivotal figure in the company’s AI strategy and is a key member of Satya Nadella’s executive team.
A New User Interface for AI
He explained, “The first chapter of AI was bringing AI into people’s existing workflows. The second chapter is a new AI. With Copilot, we have now created a new user interface for AI where chat, search, documents, and collaboration come together with Copilot pages.” Recently, the company introduced Copilot Pages, a new collaborative platform that harnesses Copilot BizChat, a tool designed to compile insights from various web and workplace data into a shareable document.
Empowering the Indian Ecosystem
Jha identified India as an “AI-forward nation” and expressed a desire to enhance the partner ecosystem through collaborations with tech companies like HCL, Infosys, Cognizant, and L&T. “For every dollar we make out of Copilot, our partners can earn between USD 8 to USD 10 more,” he noted. The usage of Copilot has surged tenfold in the past six months. “We aim to collaborate with the ecosystem in India to establish it as an AI-first country, an AI-first economy. Infosys has reported that 18,000 of their engineers are utilizing GitHub Copilot, resulting in 7 million lines of code generated,” Jha mentioned.
Initiatives for AI Progress
Jha also pointed out that initiatives such as Jugalbandhi, Bhashini, Shiksha Copilot, along with Microsoft’s commitment to upskill 2 million individuals in AI by 2025, are integral to the company’s mission to foster AI advancements in the region.
