With Copilot, Microsoft shows the way for AI-powered future of work

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Editor's note: Microsoft really likes the idea of a virtual office assistant. Remember Clippy? After constant ridicule in the 1990s and early noughties, Microsoft dropped the same. Once the company’s mobile phone ambitions died, orphaning its voice assistant Cortana, Microsoft pivoted Cortana to be that office assistant—bringing in context from your documents, files and email conversations and helping you schedule meetings, et al. That too didn’t work out well. Microsoft slowly, and steadily, limited its scope before abandoning it completely. In line with the theme of the year, Microsoft has revived its ambitions again with Copilot. And it’s the first time that the company’s concept of virtual assistants, as it fits into its idea of the future of work, doesn’t look misplaced. The new set of AI-powered features announced last week will help speed up content creation and free up productive time for office workers. It’s not just a chatbot sitting in the sidebar. It’s adaptive; you can create content, slides, graphs, etc. and can also bring a lot of customizations without digging into the app’s features and options. The reason Copilot …