Microsoft Teams AI Updates for Chat, Rooms Pro Management

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While most of the recent advances in Microsoft Teams can be found in the new Teams Premium, some AI features have moved to the base offering.

Microsoft said in a Feb. 28 blog post that it has added new AI-powered features for users of the core Microsoft Teams platform. Key among these is a feature that brings suggested files into the chat window, minimizing the number of clicks a user needs to manually browse and open the file.

Another AI-powered technology allows users to access the Teams Rooms Pro Management portal on Android devices. Now, Android users can use portal tools to view inventory management data, reports, and insights on Teams Rooms Android and Windows devices.

OpenAI’s GPT-3.5-powered AI technologies are the most intriguing offerings in the Teams portfolio, said Commfusion analyst Blair Pleasant.

Anything related to artificial intelligence, and especially OpenAI, will attract attention. Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI will put the fire under competitors. Blair PleasantAnalyst, Commfusion

“Anything related to artificial intelligence, and especially OpenAI, is going to attract attention,” he said. “Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI will put the fire under competitors.”

Microsoft said in January it would invest $10 billion in the AI ​​research lab and vendor OpenAI, creator of the GPT-3.5 large language model, continuing a partnership that began in 2019.

The tech giant revealed last month that it added features from OpenAI’s ChatGPT generative AI chatbot to its Bing search engine that powers the Edge browser.

Microsoft Teams’ competitors Zoom and Cisco Webex are also investing in AI-backed tools.

In its fourth-quarter earnings call on Feb. 27, Zoom said it will incorporate more AI technology into its offerings. “We will be incorporating more AI technologies into our products to truly help our customers maximize their ROI on our platform and thrive in this new era of computing,” Zoom CEO Eric Yuan said on the call.

In January, Cisco released an AI-powered “optimize for all voices” feature for Webex that distinguishes a speaker’s voice from background noise and clarifies speaking voices that may be further away from a microphone.

Last month Microsoft released more advanced features using GPT-3.5 in its Microsoft Teams Premium portfolio. These tools include AI-generated chapters for PowerPoint live recordings, custom timeline markers to privately track when a user has joined and left a meeting, and real-time subtitle translation during meetings.

Updates to Microsoft Teams also include a virtual appointment meeting template for Teams users to set up external meetings with clients and others via the Teams calendar.

Microsoft is expected to roll out a major overhaul of Teams later this month or next month. The vendor usually introduces incremental features and functionality for its enterprise application platforms in the monthly blog posts.

Mary Reines joined TechTarget Editorial in October 2022 as a news writer covering networking. Prior to TechTarget, Reines worked for five years as art editor at the Marblehead Reporter, her hometown newspaper. She received her journalism degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she worked as an assistant news editor for the student newspaper The Daily Collegian.

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