Microsoft’s AI driven Copilot already led to 70% increase in productivity amongst businesses

Eight months after Microsoft introduced 365 Modern Work Copilot to help people focus on what matters, a combination of surveys and experiments is already showing that the productivity gains promised are real: 70% increase in productivity during the early Copilot access stage.

“Nearly every industry is undergoing a collective transformation and discovering entirely new ways of working due to AI advancements. Microsoft Ignite has now showcased the advances being developed to help customers, partners and developers achieve the total value of Microsoft’s technology and reshape the way work is done. Copilot for Microsoft 365 in fact, is already reducing digital debt and increasing productivity so people can focus on the work that is uniquely human,” said Microsoft.

In addition to the staggering productivity increase:

• 68% said it improved the quality of their work and helped jumpstart the creative process
• users were 29% faster at specific tasks such as searching, writing and summarizing
• 64% said Copilot helps them spend less time processing email
• 75% are saving time by finding whatever they need in their files
• 77% said that once they used Copilot, they don’t want to give it up.

Building on the early access program, Microsoft Ignite 2023 has now presented its new wave of AI: a showcase of 100 new advances that touch on multiple layers of an AI-forward strategy, from adoption to productivity to security to a number of tools that enable people and businesses achieve more.

These include Microsoft Azure Maia, an AI Accelerator chip designed to run cloud-based training and inferencing for AI workloads such as OpenAI models, Bing, GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT, Microsoft Azure Cobalt, a cloud-native chip based on Arm architecture optimized for performance, power efficiency and cost-effectiveness for general purpose workloads and the general availability of Azure Boost, a system that makes storage and networking faster by moving those processes off the host servers onto purpose-built hardware and software.

“Microsoft is championing generative AI to address critical challenges in business and society. With a commitment to responsible and secure product development, we are offering copilot capabilities, industry-specific solutions, and collaboration for custom AI solutions, aiming to accelerate AI transformation in partnership with all our customers and partners,” concluded Microsoft.