Revealed: the Australian companies that have taken up Microsoft’s ‘invitation only’ AI offer
The US software giant has an answer for Australia’s flatlining productivity: its AI Copilot. But at this stage access to the tech is invitation only.
Microsoft has quietly launched its AI “copilot” platform across several of Australia’s biggest companies, including NAB, AGL and Suncorp, a move that aims to generate tens of billions of dollars in savings.
Copilot has been touted as being as pervasive as Windows, embedded across Microsoft’s suite of products including Word, Excel and Powerpoint, and as disruptive as cloud computing thanks its ability to eliminate tedious, productivity-sapping tasks.
Using basic English commands an employee can harness computing power to analyse massive amounts of company data to speed up otherwise cumbersome research, write draft proposals and format presentations, clear overflowing inboxes and more within minutes.
The system can summarise an avalanche of email threads, tell an employee whether they need to respond, and even draft responses, freeing them up for more productive duties.
Microsoft chairman and chief executive Satya Nadella says it will “fundamentally change the way we work and unlock a new wave of productivity growth”.
“With our new copilot for work, we’re giving people more agency and making technology more accessible through the most universal interface – natural language,” Mr Nadella said.
But the $US2.5 trillion ($3.9 trillion) software giant is yet to announce a widespread launch date, initially giving access to just a handful of companies.
NAB, AGL, Bupa, Data#3, Powerlink, Rest Super and Suncorp are among those that have joined Microsoft’s invitation-only early access program.
These companies had been testing the product with their employees and further refining it, said Lucy Debono, Microsoft Australia and New Zealand’s group director for modern business work.
“Business leaders within the early access program see this as an opportunity to gain a first-mover advantage in their sectors, and enable greater productivity in a market that is navigating sustained economic pressure,” Ms Debono said.
In Australia’s financial sector alone, early adoption of generative AI technology is expected to generate $5bn to $13bn a year in economic value by the end of the decade, according to a study by the Tech Council of Australia and Microsoft.
Copilot is about more than embedding ChatGPT – which unleashed the potential of AI when it was launched last year – into Microsoft 365. It uses a business’s own data, including documents, emails, calendars, chats, meetings, contacts and other information to generate answers and personalised content. But the use of AI across businesses has sparked concerns about intellectual property leakage and the level of control individual employees have to different levels of sensitive company information.
Ms Debono said Microsoft’s customers were “always in control of the data being used, while maintaining the access controls they have in place for their workforce”.
“These are the foundations and guardrails needed to warrant people’s trust, so customers can have confidence as they harness the innovative capabilities of our AI-fuelled productivity tools across their workforce,” Ms Debono said.
The push to increase output comes after the federal government’s sixth intergenerational report suggested that the energy, utilities and construction sectors needed to adopt technology to help automate routine tasks and bolster productivity.
The intergenerational report projected annual productivity growth of 1.2 per cent compared to 1.5 per cent in the previous two reports in 2021 and 2015, prompting many chief executives to personally spearhead the use of technology such as Copilot to lift business performance.
AGL head of employee technology Grace Russo said the technology had allowed more seamless remote working arrangements.
“We have embraced flexible work models over the past few years, which has been positive on multiple fronts. However, it has also meant that employees are spending more time managing chats, emails and in meetings in order to stay connected,” Ms Russo said.
“We are excited by Microsoft 365 Copilot and the huge potential it offers in helping our employees to be more efficient, productive and liberate them from the mundane to focus on higher value tasks.”
Microsoft’s chief technology officer for Australia and New Zealand, Sarah Carney, said companies in the construction and engineering sectors had been using Copilot to complete tender documents.
“For them that‘s a massive workload for their people. (Tendering involves) hundreds of pages of documentation that are worked on by lots of different people. So how do you create a cohesive voice across that?” Ms Carney said.
“Instead of spending hours just trying to format things or make it all sound like one tone or things like that, they’re focusing their time on really high value work.”
Ms Carney said it might unlock new business models, particularly in the legal profession where clients are charged billable hours. “It is an industry ripe for disruption. They are rewarded based on the time it takes to complete an activity and so the fact that some of those firms have signed up – and they’re significant firms, not small ones, big global firms – for a tool that focuses on productivity and efficiency, I think is just it could fundamentally change how those services are delivered,” Ms Carney said.
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