Microsoft is bringing the technology behind the ChatGPT language model that works with artificial intelligence (AI) into more and more products. The software company announced on Thursday that it would also equip its most important office programs with AI functions. He introduced a "copilot" function for Microsoft 365, the software family that includes building blocks such as Word for word processing, Outlook for e-mails or PowerPoint for presentations.

Roland Lindner

Business correspondent in New York.

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The Copilot service helps, for example, to write and edit texts or create presentations. There's also the "Business Chat" feature, which works across different programs from Microsoft 365.

Microsoft has an alliance with Open AI, the maker of ChatGPT. In February, the software company presented a new version of its search engine Bing equipped with AI functions. This new edition of Bing, as well as the new Copilot service, uses GPT-4, the latest version of the Open AI language model, which was unveiled just this week. It should now also be available in the fee-based premium version of ChatGPT. So far, ChatGPT runs with the previous version GPT 3.5.

For Microsoft, integrating AI into its office programs may be even more important than Bing's AI variant. The group's office software is ubiquitous, whereas Bing has so far only a very manageable market share. Microsoft has said it wants to integrate software from Open AI across its entire product range.