Microsoft is advancing its AI efforts with the next phase of Copilot, aiming to extend beyond individual productivity into business-wide transformation. "Copilot Wave 2 will go beyond individual productivity to business productivity," said Rajesh Jha, Global EVP of Experience and Devices at Microsoft, according to an ET report.
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Copilot as a Trusted AI Companion
Reportedly, Jha highlighted that Copilot is designed to be a trusted AI companion that enhances human agency in the workplace.
"We're not building AI for social media or commerce sites,” the report quoted Jha as saying. "Copilot is a trusted AI companion for human agency, both as an assistant and in the workplace." Jha, who has been with Microsoft for 18 years and oversees Office 365, Teams, and Bing, plays a crucial role in the company’s AI strategy and is a key member of Satya Nadella's team.
A New User Interface for AI
"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, collaboration have come together with Copilot pages," the report added.
The company recently introduced Copilot Pages, a new collaborative platform that leverages Copilot BizChat, a tool that gathers insights from both web and workplace data into a shareable document. Jha refers to this as a "new user interface for AI."
Empowering the Indian Ecosystem
He reportedly calls India as an "AI-forward nation" and wants to strengthen its partner ecosystem through tech companies like HCL, Infosys, Cognizant, L&T, because "for every dollar we make out of Copilot, our partners can make USD 8 to USD 10 more," Jha said.
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Copilot usage has increased tenfold in the last six months. "We really want to partner with the ecosystem in India to make it an AI-first country, an AI-first economy. Infosys disclosed that 18,000 of their engineers are using GitHub Copilot, generating 7 million lines of code," the report added Jha as saying.
Initiatives for AI Progress
He also reportedly mentioned that initiatives like Jugalbandhi, Bhashini, Shiksha Copilot, and Microsoft's pledge to upskill 2 million people in AI by 2025 are part of the company's efforts to drive AI progress in the region.