skift take
— Justin Dawes
Microsoft Teams' AI assistant can take notes and list follow-up points during meetings. It's one of the most frequently used since Amadeus employees began testing his Microsoft generative AI chatbot Copilot last August.
“There's no organization in the world that's really good at taking notes in meetings. And it's always difficult for someone to focus on what's being said and take notes instead of participating in the discussion.” Amadeus Digital Workplace said Frederick Ross, Director of Services. “The implementation of this type of technology has greatly improved our work efficiency.”
He added that the Teams chatbot was able to understand five different accents and company-specific acronyms during a single meeting.
Madrid-based Amadeus is one of the few companies testing Copilot as part of Microsoft's early adopter program. Copilot tools are integrated into Microsoft's suite of products: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams.
Testing at Amadeus began with 300 employees at various levels within the company. The company has been working to make the technology available to its 6,000 employees, about a third of the company.
While Amadeus is still trying to measure exactly how much time Copilot saves on specific tasks, the sentiment among employees was clear.
“The signal they were all sending was, ‘Don’t remove it.’ I want to keep it that way,” said Ross, who is leading the implementation of generative AI within Amadeus. I did.
Introducing AI at Amadeus
Amadeus compiled an internal policy regarding generative AI in February 2023. The company has also put together training on how to use Copilot and generative AI in general, and how to create prompts that elicit optimal responses.
“If we want to be able to develop products that use generative AI, we need to make sure that the people on our side really understand what generative AI is and are trained to use it. We need to do that,” Ross said. “Once they start using his Copilot every day, they'll have a deep understanding of how Copilot works and what it can bring to them, and they'll probably have some ideas in their head.”
Here are some other ways Amadeus employees are using Copilot:
- Summarize long threads of chats between colleagues.This is especially helpful for people who join the chat late
- Suggest draft email text based on the context of an employee's job role
- For manually composed emails, grammar and tone suggestions are especially helpful for non-native English speakers.
- Search online and Amadeus proprietary data more effectively
Bugs have cropped up along the way, which is to be expected, but they are usually quickly identified and resolved, he said.
“It's software. There are always bugs,” Ross said. “But interestingly, this solution is evolving very quickly.”
Microsoft and Amadeus AI
Microsoft announced in September that it would integrate Copilot into its products. The presentation included examples of how it can be used for meeting planning and corporate travel. The Copilot for Microsoft product was generally available to enterprise customers last November.
Skift outlined how the adoption of AI as back-office assistants is a growing trend in the travel industry.
Microsoft is investing billions of dollars in OpenAI, which develops ChatGPT, making it a co-owner of the company and giving it exclusive access to develop products using generative AI technology. Masu.
The same technology powers the new Amadeus retail system, which Amadeus aims to make airline sales more like shopping on Amazon, allowing employees to use natural language to book business trips. Connections that allow you to do so have also been tested. Several other pilots are in the works.
Photo credit: Amadeus uses Microsoft Copilot internally.
