Microsoft's Copilot was formerly Bing Chat. Google's Gemini was formerly Bard. Both Microsoft and Google has a suite of Office Productivity tools like email, spreadsheet, online file storage drive, chat, video conference etc. With the advent of Gen AI, both employed it in their office tool suite and this post is to see areas where these tools can be made use of by productivity freaks like you and me in our day to day tasks:
- You can access both Copilot and Gemini online as your AMA (Ask Me Anything) guide. Copilot takes it one step further to try it out without even signing in compromising on some features. Gemini is more pro in this as signed-in user, because it allows you to group your topic-wise chats with AI assistant, for better manageability - an underappreciated feature by many that I personally am fond of as it helps me keeping things organized. Both of them are pretty up to date in terms of getting latest information. That said, you are better off doing your own due diligence, for there will be times that it can be grossly wrong like shown in the screenshot below (I couldn't find the source to credit it and that when I did try the same again the AI agent answered right):
- If you are on Windows using Edge browser, Copilot can help you summarize the webpage content for the impatient you. You can also ask Copilot specific questions against the page content. I didn't have a pleasant experience on this front though.
- Both can generate images for you but again, I didn't have a very pleasant experience in this. For example I tried creating a banner image for this blog post with the prompt, "Can you generate a banner image depicting verbal dual between Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini on a stage with large crowd watching them?". If it is about my prompt that created bad output and you as expert prompt engineering can generate a good banner image for this post, feel free to try it out and share it with me in comments to this blog post, and I promise to have that image as banner image to this post should I love it, giving you the due credits.
- With Microsoft Copilot in Edge Browser, you can also ask for weather updates, analyze an image etc. Chrome browser doesn't have this AI agent integrated with it yet.
- Microsoft Copilot in Excel can make you more productive with plot generation in a jiffy, provided your data is in tabularized format. You now don't have to be an Excel expert to work with Excel formulas, so long as you know how to make use of this embedded AI agent. Google has Gemini embedded in its spreadsheet. Both Copilot and Gemini work only for subscribed/paid users though.
- You can generate mail content, that I have seen people do. I am bit of an old school guy here that I love keying my thoughts than generating one.
- With Copilot in Microsoft Outlook, you can even summarize long mail conversations which is exciting, but not sure how effective it is. Use it at your own risk. I do use this for non-critical conversation thread.
- Copilot in Teams is another crazy thing that I didn't expect. You don't have it Google chat as yet. Can you believe it that you can ask the agent questions about your 1-on-1 chat conversation, to get quick answers instead of scrolling up and down multiple times.
- Copilot in Teams and Calendar can also be used to set transcription of online meetings, to perhaps get rid of your MoMs (Minutes of Meeting) or make it easier creating one for you. As an old schooler, I usually send MoM for critical business meetings and this feature is something I love so much.
- With Copilot in Calendar, you can select your missed meetings and get meeting summary, if the organizer of the meeting has turned on the transcribing service.
- If you are using Microsoft's Loop, that is sort of similar to Atlassian's Confluence, you can use it to generate page content blocks.
- Similarly, you can use it to generate content for your presentations from open internet or select source file located in your shared online drives linked to your office subscription.
These are small and powerful atomic habits that helps me. If you think, I have missed out on any, that you do at work leveraging these agents, please do share it in comments.