The only practical use of AI right now
The only practical use of AI right now
If Copilot is good at creating PowerPoint presentations, that would be life-changing.
Every company wants you to think the thing it is building will change your life. That’s almost never the case. Usually, it’s just hype—which is fine, except that if you keep making promises you can’t keep, that’s bad. Microsoft—yes, Microsoft—just announced something that actually might live up to the hype by being the only practical use of AI right now.
AI will make your Powerpoint for you
At an event last week, Microsoft rolled out AI-powered features in its Office software suite called Copilot. During the demo, Microsoft showed how Copilot will be able to do things like send an email summarizing a meeting based on the meeting notes, or create a PowerPoint presentation based on a sales proposal in a Word document.
It may not sound like much, but it’s quite impressive. That’s especially true when you consider the amount of time the people you work with spend doing exactly that.
Also, most people are bad at PowerPoint. That’s because most people are not designers, and they have jobs and families and do not have time to learn all of the features of PowerPoint. As a result, most PowerPoint presentations are bad. If AI can solve that single problem, meetings everywhere will be a little less unbearable.
But Copilot is actually pretty good at things like “make me a 15-slide presentation from this sales proposal,” or “draft a meeting recap email from this transcript in Word.” Considering the amount of time that people spend doing those types of tasks, this is a big deal.
In fact, I think Nadella is right that Microsoft Copilot is going to change almost everything about the way millions of people approach daily tasks. Basically, Copilot is the realization of the long-standing dream Microsoft first introduced as Clippy. Unlike Clippy, however, Copilot is actually useful. It's also a lot smarter because it's able to access your documents and existing data.
Mostly, it’s smart because the name tells you exactly what the feature does. It’s not meant to replace your work, but it’s a tool that can help you with tasks as you work. It’s a copilot. You’re still in control, but Copilot will get you started, analyze information, give you a first draft, or put together a presentation. It’s still up to you to decide what to do with it all, but if Copilot can make it so I never have to put together another PowerPoint presentation, that’s as big a win as I can ask for.
You can watch the entire announcement and demo here:
The Yellow iPhone
Apple released a new iPhone 14 last week. Technically, the only thing new is the color. In this case, yellow. Other than that, it's exactly the same in every way as the iPhone 14 models Apple introduced in September. It's also a brilliant lesson for every small business owner about how to create anticipation and delight your customers even when you don't have something new to sell.
The yellow iPhone 14 doesn't have any new features. It's just an iPhone 14 or iPhone 14 Plus, but it's yellow. Why is that such a big deal? Because people are talking and writing about a brand new iPhone, and all Apple had to do was order some paint, put it on the existing model. and sell a few million of them.
Okay, I know it's a little more complicated than that, and no one is sitting around painting iPhones. But, for a company that releases new iPhones on a religious schedule, dropping something it can call new in the middle of the cycle is really smart.
Of course, people who upgrade their iPhones on a regular schedule will tell you that the yellow iPhone is a very bad deal. There's a new one coming in just six months. "You should definitely wait for the iPhone 15 coming this fall," they will tell you.
The thing is, most people don't upgrade their iPhones every year, or even every other year. Most people upgrade their new iPhone when they need a new iPhone. They wait as long as they can, and when they need one, they don't care that much about whether the next one is coming later.
I read a few articles claiming this is a blatant attempt to get headlines and juice sales midcycle, and, of course, it is. That's why it's so smart. Apple introduces a new iPhone that isn't functionally new at all, but still gets to use the word "new" to market it. Apple knows people don't pay attention to six-month-old iPhone models the same way they pay attention to the word "new."
Google beats Microsoft to announce AI features
Technically, Google did beat Microsoft to the announcement that it was bringing AI to office productivity tools. It held its own event to roll out similar features in Gmail, as well as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.
"Whether you're a busy HR professional who needs to create customized job descriptions, or a parent drafting the invitation for your child's pirate-themed birthday party, Workspace saves you the time and effort of writing that first version. Simply type a topic you'd like to write about, and a draft will instantly be generated for you."
In theory, the feature should work a lot like what Microsoft rolled out, except that Google was a lot less clear on the details, and didn’t have much to demo. It’s pretty clear that Google is playing catch up, even though it keeps trying to preempt whatever Microsoft is doing by announcing it first.
More Meta layoffs
After a couple of rough years for Meta, the company he founded, Mark Zuckerberg is hoping for a turnaround. I suppose you can't blame him -- things couldn't get much worse. First, Apple's rollout of App Tracking Transparency cost Meta as much as $10 billion. Then, the pivot to building the metaverse hasn't really panned out. Finally, tech companies in general have felt the pressure of slower growth. As I said, it's been rough.
For Zuckerberg, the answer to these problems was to proclaim at the company's most recent earnings call that 2023 would be what he calls a "year of efficiency." That came after Meta had already laid off 11,000 employees last fall in an effort to contain expenses. Now, the company is cutting even more employees.
"Overall, we expect to reduce our team size by around 10,000 people and to close around 5,000 additional open roles that we haven't yet hired," Zuckerberg wrote in an email to employees that was published on the company's blog. "This will be tough and there's no way around that. It will mean saying goodbye to talented and passionate colleagues who have been part of our success. They've dedicated themselves to our mission and I'm personally grateful for all their efforts. We will support people in the same ways we have before and treat everyone with the gratitude they deserve."
Look, I get that layoffs are a thing that happens, and -- to be fair -- Meta seems to be trying to do the right thing to take care of employees who lose their jobs. But there's really no good way to tell someone they're no longer going to get a paycheck since nothing you can say will make it easier to pay their rent.
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