Copilot Groups is a new features that lets multiple people use Copilot together in one session.
The Five Most-Key Takeaways from This Blog Post
- As of right now, 32 people can fit into a Copilot Groups chat. Depending on the size of the company, this could be adequate for many teams and group assignments.
- Of course, smaller collaborations could benefit from this as well.
- The Copilot Groups experience lets everyone prompt Copilot, so that outputs can be a collaborative effort. Users can also talk to each other without prompting Copilot, so that it feels like the A.I. is not always the center of the conversation.
- Businesses can find plenty of uses here if the business uses A.I. quite a bit for brainstorming or creating content and communications.
- This feature, as of this writing, is still in a rollout phase. Copilot Groups is available even for free users, but if you are not yet seeing the icon for adding someone to a conversation, go to the website version of Copilot–the writer of this blog post did not see it in the desktop app, but did see it on the website version.
The Significance for Business Owners
Businesses can start using Copilot Groups today to experiment with this tool.
Instead of splitting up coworkers to use A.I. on their own in group projects, Copilot Groups represents an effort to give A.I. a deeper integration in human collaborations in the workplace.
Microsoft launched this in the consumer version of Copilot, but could be bringing this into Microsoft 365 Copilot sometime in the future. For now, however, businesses will need to rely on using individual employee accounts inviting each other to Copilot Groups chats.
Brainstorming with Copilot
This can be especially excellent when brainstorming ideas with A.I., as many users report that A.I. is useful for idea generation.
For instance, if you and a coworker are both trying to think up different ways to tackle a group presentation, starting a Copilot Groups conversation can be useful.
Asking A.I. to give recommendations here can have benefits beyond just good advice.
One additional perk is that it can be good for collaborators to voice their preferences for how to tackle a project.
For example, Copilot in a group chat may suggest starting off a presentation with a bold general statement. One of the members may say “No, actually I would prefer we start with hard data about the topic. What are some potentially effective opening lines that incorporate important statistics?”
In this way, then, the A.I. can serve as an intermediary for collaborators to generate an agreed-upon course of action.
Post-Meeting Analysis
Sharing notes after a meeting in a Copilot Groups chat can be useful, as Copilot could combine the notes as well as offer analysis of the combination.
So, businesses could use this feature for processing meetings and getting more insights from it, instead of leaving everyone to process the meeting on their own.
Collaborative Content Creation
Being able to create images in Copilot is a great feature for Copilot Groups.
Within Copilot Groups, users can discuss and agree on a prompt for an image, then have Copilot send the prompt.
Once Copilot generates the image, the group can then discuss any potential edits. From there, the users can send a prompt for altering the image to get closer to what they wanted.
Iterate this process until everyone is fine with the final product. This can be much easier than just having one person generate an image alone, then send it out for feedback. Here, the feedback and image generation are conveniently taking place in the same place.
Getting Everyone in on A.I.
So much A.I. use currently feels one-on-one, which is why there are efforts by companies like Microsoft to bring A.I. into collaborative group efforts.
This fits into a broader effort to make A.I. become social. You can find an example of this phenomenon in the Sora 2 app, which very much resembles a social-media app with a native video-generative A.I. tool for creating videos to post.
It gets social in many ways beyond the usual likes and comments. Using Sora to “remix” another user’s post is one way that using A.I. itself is becoming social.
The use of A.I. being social is the key idea to take note of, here. Sharing A.I.-generated content and insights is one thing, but making the use of A.I. itself part of the social process is the next step toward A.I.’s integration into human society.
The Last (But Not Least) Key Takeaway from This Blog Post
If you think it is a cool and novel idea but do not prefer Copilot over other A.I. platforms, it is safe to say that you will see a similar feature pop up in your A.I. platform of choice sometime in the future, as copycatting is a big part of the A.I. industry.
Other Great GO AI Blog Posts
GO AI the blog offers a combination of information about, analysis of, and editorializing on A.I. technologies of interest to business owners, with especial focus on the impact this tech will have on commerce as a whole.
On a usual week, there are multiple GO AI blog posts going out. Here are some notable recent articles:
- For Businesses and Other Organizations, What Makes a Successful Chatbot?
- IBM Watson vs. ChatGPT vs. Gemini: How Will Each Affect Search Engines?
- Using A.I. to Find Resources for Business Owners
- How Would Restricting Open-Source A.I. Affect Business Owners?
- The EU’s A.I. Act Has Become Law: The Implications for Business Owners (Especially American)
In addition to our GO AI blog, we also have a blog that offers important updates in the world of search engine optimization (SEO), with blog posts like “Google Ends Its Plan to End Third-Party Cookies”.
GO Deeper on Substack!
If you want to get a bigger-picture view on where A.I. is and is headed, then check out our Substack to learn about emerging and dominant themes in the A.I. industry that affect all kinds of businesses!
