Summary
- Microsoft is bringing generative AI features to its cloud storage service, OneDrive, similar to its existing AI product, Copilot.
- A leaked teaser video suggests that OneDrive’s AI capabilities will include organizational features and more efficient file lookups.
- Microsoft may announce and demonstrate new Copilot features for OneDrive at its Power Platform conference on October 3.
The AI battle continues to rage, and both Google and Microsoft have launched their generative AI products that integrate deeply into their respective office suites. Microsoft’s Copilot has been a part of Office 365 apps like Word, PowerPoint and Excel for some time. Now it looks like the company is bringing similar AI capabilities to its cloud storage service, OneDrive.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is the best combination of modern generative AI and Clippy the office assistant from the past. It was introduced a few months ago and is available as an add-on to a bunch of Microsoft productivity apps, including Teams and Outlook, but not OneDrive. According to a leaked teaser video, OneDrive may get similar generative AI features next month.
The video embedded above shows a sample AI search in OneDrive: “Help me get organized.” While the video doesn’t reveal the AI’s response or exactly how Copilot will organize files on OneDrive, it does hint at the kinds of AI use cases Microsoft wants to promote for OneDrive. Apart from organizational features, one can predict that Copilot can view files more efficiently even if you forget their location or name.
At the end of the video, you can see that the announcement will be made on October 3rd. Coincidentally, on the same day Microsoft is holding its Power Platform conference to talk about its various enterprise and business applications. There is a good chance that Microsoft will showcase new Copilot features for OneDrive during this event.
Currently, even if you already have a Microsoft 365 subscription for your team, you can’t directly access Copilot in Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. The company needs to cough up another $30 per user per month for access to these advanced AI tools. While they help increase your productivity, the cost is still huge.
Following in Microsoft’s footsteps, Google has also priced Duet AI at the same $30 per month for Workspace accounts. With Duet AI enabled, you can compose emails in Gmail or write drafts in Google Docs with just a few prompts. However, Google is yet to bring these Smart Duet AI-enabled features to Drive.