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Since its launch in 2017, Microsoft Teams has grown significantly compared to its competitors. However, despite its monumental rise in the space, it does not offer the same level of seamless experience in juxtaposition.
Recently, Microsoft confirmed the media speculations that the Redmond-based company will embed ChatGPT with Teams as part of a new premium offering.
What ChatGPT brings to the table?
Microsoft Teams Premium will leverage the power of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 powered Large Language Models (LLM) to enhance meetings with increased intelligence, personalisation, and security.
ChatGPT integration implies that users will receive automatically generated meeting notes, recommended tasks, and personalised highlights, which will ensure they receive the information that matters most to them—even if they were not able to attend the meeting.
“In the coming months, you’ll see key points and takeaways after the meeting, with AI-generated notes automatically created and powered by GPT-3.5,” Microsoft said.
( Source: Microsoft)
Harnessing the power of LLM, users will be able to get real-time translations for as many as 40 different spoken languages.
Further, the AI-generated chapters feature in Teams Premium will allow users to divide meetings into easily accessible sections, saving time and effort in reviewing meeting recordings. This feature automatically generates chapters based on the meeting transcript, thus providing a more efficient way to select relevant content.
Can AI make Teams better?
While AI integration does make Teams an exciting tool, does it overcome the problems that users have faced over the years? To some extent, yes. For instance, customisation was one of the key issues that organisations encountered when using Microsoft Teams. With Teams Premium, the tech giant looks to tackle this problem.
Users will be able to “customise their meetings to provide a best-in-class experience during client calls or create an engaging and inclusive environment within the company,” Microsoft said.
However, several other problems plague the users of Microsoft Teams as many have taken to various platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook and Reddit, to share the details of the problems they faced while using it.
Nikhil Kamath, co-founder of Zerodha took to Twitter to share his frustrations. “Why is Microsoft teams so unnecessarily complicated, google meets, zoom etc, are so much simpler to use,” he asked.
A notable criticism for Teams is redundant features. In fact, some users have reported struggling to find the features they actually need.
However, it’s important to note that Teams is not just a video conferencing tool but more of a team collaboration tool, which explains the additional features.
Further, It’s not only non-availability of right features users struggle with but poor UI/UX as well. “Microsoft Teams follows great Microsoft tradition. Patchwork of incompatible pieces of SW code and lousy UI. I refuse meeting invites if Microsoft Teams is suggested. Can never login in on one try. They are exploiting their enterprise monopoly,” complained RK Mishra, co-founder of Yulu, in a tweet.
Driving Teams market share
Despite all of its shortcomings, Microsoft Teams could further scale in the coming months. Microsoft launched Teams in 2017 and has since managed to gain prominent market share despite competing with the likes of Zoom, Google Meet and Slack. Assisted by the pandemic, Teams’ active users increased from 75 million users in 2020 to 270 million in 2022.
(Source: Statista)
So, why has Microsoft Teams witnessed significant growth if users are unhappy with the tool? This is mostly because Microsoft sells Teams as a bundle product along with its other products, such as Microsoft Office. This means that companies can get Teams at a lower price than their competitors, like Slack or Zoom. So, from an organisation’s perspective, it does make sense.
Now, the integration of AI could help further drive Microsoft Teams’ growth in the coming months as businesses look to benefit from using AI that powers ChatGPT.
Further, according to reports, Microsoft might integrate GPT3.5 LLM with Microsoft Office 365. The integration of ChatGPT into Microsoft Office 365 could bring AI technology to Microsoft Powerpoint, Word, and Outlook. This inevitably gives Microsoft an edge over its competitors, making their bundle offerings more attractive.
