We’ve previously written about the use of AI in the workplace and what is driving the increased adoption of solutions like Microsoft Copilot across organisations today. More and more businesses want to leverage the creative and operational advantages of generative AI platforms for their users. As such, the field of business-focused AI is an area of fast-paced innovation, with existing solutions being updated, and new ones being announced.
With that in mind, what are these new AI offerings, how do they differ, and what do they mean for businesses?
The New Batch
Our previous blog discussed Microsoft Copilot, but just in case you missed it, it’s an interesting new tool that plugs generative AI into the Microsoft Office suite of apps. Copilot feeds a large language model (LLM) with important data from your environment, helping it learn what your users are looking to achieve, and then giving them the power to use the AI wherever works best for them – whether that’s generating text in Word, designing slides in PowerPoint, or helping to model data in Excel.
Microsoft has also demonstrated a range of interesting use cases in Microsoft apps and tools like Teams, GitHub, and Power Automate – all of which can help users achieve much more than ever before.
Copilot utilises the GPT-4 large language model, which also powers ChatGPT. Given the launch of ChatGPT essentially kicked off the current hype around generative AI, it’s no surprise that OpenAI – the company behind it – is also looking to develop into the business AI space.
OpenAI recently announced ChatGPT Enterprise, an explicitly business-focused version of the platform that offers better security, faster response times, and generally superior performance. Of these, the promise of enhanced security is particularly noteworthy. A number of organisations have suffered from inadvertent data breaches due to employees using ChatGPT, as user prompts from the free ChatGPT plan are used to further train the model, meaning that sensitive data was learned by the program and then given out to other users.
To avoid this, ChatGPT Enterprise uses a separate version of the platform that ensures information from prompts doesn’t enter the model’s training data, ensuring security.
Another big splash in the business AI space has been made by Google, who are continuing to make steps to advance their AI strategy and have unveiled Duet AI for Google Workspace.
In terms of capability, Google Duet is fairly similar to Microsoft Copilot, but it’s built to work inside Google Workspace, rather than Microsoft 365. However, one key difference is that Duet uses Google’s own PaLM 2 LLM, rather than OpenAI’s GPT-4 model.
Which is best for me?
With all these new business-focused AI offerings entering the market, it’s getting increasingly complicated for organisations that are keen to leverage AI-powered tools to find the right solutions for them. To help your business make an informed choice, we’ve run through the options already discussed to offer some guidance as to where we see each approach as the best fit:
1. ChatGPT (Free Version) – Sometimes it’s hard to beat the original – especially when it’s free. ChatGPT has impressive generative AI capabilities – after all, it did kick off the current wave of interest in AI – although it does come with drawbacks, with gaps in its dataset, no support for plugins in the free version, and the aforementioned security risks. As such, it’s best suited for organisations that just need the occasional helping hand with generating content, rather than those looking to supercharge every part of a user’s day-to-day with AI.
2. ChatGPT Enterprise – This offering is ideal for businesses that have already done some experimentation around ChatGPT and are looking to enhance the platform’s capabilities (and mitigate its downsides). Features like chat templates, longer prompts, and unlimited high-speed access to GPT-4 all allow your users to make the most of AI, more effectively than before. These additional features come as part of a paid subscription to the service, similar to the existing ChatGPT Plus offering – but while Plus is tailored more to specific power users within an organisation, ChatGPT Enterprise is best suited for businesses who want to advance their AI strategy across their organisation.
3. Microsoft Copilot – Copilot gives businesses access to the power of GPT-4 within Microsoft 365, rather than needing to either go directly to ChatGPT or set up an API to process results through the platform. As such, it helps users fill out Word documents, generate summaries of Teams meetings, and much more. While Copilot is designed to work solely within Microsoft 365, it’s not included in a subscription to the service – instead, licences for Copilot are charged as an added extra, meaning businesses can determine specific users to offer Copilot to as part of their licencing strategy.
4. Google Duet – Operating in a similar nature to Copilot, Duet sits within the Google Workspace suite of applications, helping users with key workflows in programs like Google Docs, Sheets, and Meet. The key difference (outside of the software supported) is the fact that Duet is unique on this list for not being built on top of an OpenAI GPT model, but rather Google’s own PaLM 2 model, which means that the model could be updated much more easily to introduce new capabilities for Duet. Much like Copilot, Google is only offering Duet as an add-on, rather than including it in licences for Google Workspace.
How can I get started?
No matter which of these AI-powered tools you believe is best for your business, we can help you find a way to implement it that works for you and your users. Whether you’re ready to get started, or just want to know more about the different AI platforms we’ve discussed, get in touch with the team to find out more.