Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman at the Microsoft Building AI Companions for India event in Bengaluru on how Copilot is evolving into your everyday AI companion. Photo courtesy of Microsoft.
Bengaluru, November 6, 2024: Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman kicked off his maiden visit to India by highlighting how AI companions are set to create a new class of digital experience, aligned to each person’s interests and unlike anything that technology has created before. He said the mission was to create an AI companion for everyone.
Suleyman shared his vision for the new AI era with an audience of decision-makers and innovators at the Microsoft Building AI Companions for India event in Bengaluru on Wednesday. “For too long, software has principally been utilitarian. My personal vision for AI has always been about how it can be a companion that can make each and every one of us feel more supported and smarter and more capable,” he said, addressing the gathering.
Microsoft’s refreshed Copilot launched last month and gives users the ability to talk with Copilots real-time, moving human-computer interaction to a completely new paradigm. Copilot Daily, also launched in October in select countries, allows users to start the day with a news offering.
Copilot is the new UI for AI
Copilot is transforming productivity, efficiency and outcomes for individuals and organizations with 87% of Copilot users saying it helped them be more productive. From sales to customer service, Microsoft is seeing Copilot impact functions across businesses. “We now have evidence at scale,” said Microsoft India & South Asia president, Puneet Chandok. “AI is out of the labs and driving productivity, impacting lives and livelihoods.”
Chandok spoke about how entire sectors are being reinvented with generative AI, illustrating it with how leading IT firms are leveraging Copilot to streamline software development, transform customer experiences and employee reskilling. “But it’s not just about commerce, it’s about communities,” he added.
The Sikshana Foundation and Microsoft Research India’s AI copilot has helped teachers make more engaging lesson plans and crunch the time taken for it from 90 minutes to 90 seconds. The Krishi Mitra chatbot from ITC is helping farmers improve agricultural output. “This is just the beginning of AI’s journey in India and we are proud to be building an AI-powered nation, one transformative step at a time,” Chandok said.
India’s talent pool can drive global AI innovation
Engaging in a fireside chat on the future of AI and its possibilities for India, S Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India, said the India AI mission launched by the government in March is aimed at bringing access to AI compute for all. One of the focus areas of the mission is skilling, which the government views as a real opportunity to drive an AI revolution not just in India but across the world.
Suleyman said India was one of Microsoft’s fastest growing markets and also has one of its strongest research and development teams globally. “We have extremely talented engineers and developers, and increasingly, we’re involving social scientists, psychologists, therapists, scriptwriters, comedians, and other creatives. This diversity allows us to synthesize more perspectives and get a broader picture of people involved in the design and creation process,” he added.
Speaking to Copilot’s productivity, Suleyman added that AI will put knowledge at everyone’s fingertips, synthesized, distilled, and personally tuned to how an individual wants to learn and use information – and that applies in the workplace as much as it applies at home. “M365 Copilot, for example, already does an incredible job of reasoning over your work data,” he added.
In the future, Suleyman said, people will form meaningful relationships with their AI companions. While this is the beginning of a significant shift in how we live in societies, he advocated starting conversations around this early and highlighted being proactive about safety and security as central to Microsoft’s approach to AI.
About Microsoft
Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) creates platforms and tools powered by AI to deliver innovative solutions that meet the evolving needs of our customers. The technology company is committed to making AI available broadly and doing so responsibly, with a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
