By Ken Dulaney
What I Will Microsoft Do with ChatGPT Aside from Search?
Before we decide what Microsoft might do with ChatGPT technology a review of what ChatGPT does is relevant.
I already discussed the search impact and challenges in my previous blog on ChatGPT. Now I want to go through the language input and output capabilities.
Microsoft Bing and ChatGPT
First, it was a no-brainer to augment search with ChatGPT. However, the initial rollout made it clear that Microsoft’s service was not ready for primetime. There is an issue of accuracy.
I watched a TikTok video from Rachel Woods who has been delving into the technologies behind ChatGPT. In this video clip, she spoke about a test she did with a fake URL and showed that even though it was fake, ChatGPT gave a cohesive answer about what it was. She commented that it makes stuff up!
It is important to look at the ChatGPT technology not so much for its accuracy but as a language model. As I said in my last blog on this subject, I do not think it will ever be considered the “Oracle of the Web” so to speak.
Its stored information is not always current and while vast is still limited in scope. So we should look at the language model’s key components in detail before we decide what Microsoft might do.
Using ChatGPT for Writing and Editing
No matter how you ask ChatGPT a question, the written results are produced in well-structured, grammatically correct sentences, paragraphs, and outlines.
Its output is easy to read and understand. I find this its most impressive feature. It’s not surprising that it can do this because of the forebearer products that exist today.
I have used Grammarly, a product that checks my sentence structure for both more efficient and linguistically correct structure. Grammarly had to be trained to do its thing. ChatGPT was sent to post graduate school. (Our analyst Craig Kennedy mused about putting the output of a ChatGPT query into Grammarly to see how it rated it!).
While the pre-trained version of the portion of ChatGPT will need to constantly be updated through training, it is likely the less challenging side of the product for Microsoft to use.
ChatGPT and Microsoft Word
While we expect Microsoft to add ChatGPT functionality to Microsoft Word, a third party already has.
Ghostwriter is now available in the Microsoft store and it costs 10 dollars a month. It runs in a sidebar with Microsoft Word but users do need an OpenAI account to allow the API key to make calls to the OpenAI Service. (Note: Aragon recommends against using the wide open consumer version of ChatGPT.)
On the input side, ChatGPT uses natural language processing and understanding technology that has existed from vendors such as Nuance. It decomposes a query into a set of keywords that it uses to initiate the retrieval of information. An analogy might be today’s resume-processing capabilities.
Many companies can quickly scan resumes for likely candidates through applications that look for key phrases or words in resumes they receive. Once this practice was known, developers built applications to help writers of resumes build resumes that would be picked up more often by companies they were pursuing.
Bottom Line
In Office365, we could see Word do some amazing things. It could help you write better as you write, not just underline misspelled words. It might be able to take a term paper as a whole and recast it using better English grammar or possibly change it so that its easier to understand.
Given ChatGPT can write code it might spell out formulas in Excel given the user’s input on what problem needs to be solved. This could lead to a broader use where users could bypass the typical tree structure menu system, simply ask for what they want and have the system put it together for them in whatever Office365 application or set of applications is required.
In Viva, Viva Topics could be assembling much faster and easier read with the technology. Viva Learning would benefit from ChatGPT’s ability to assemble training material. I will leave it to the reader to envision the myriad of other capabilities that could be improved.
Tune into our LIVE Keynote Session with our Analysts on ChatGPT!
Join us for our annual Transform Tour 2023 on Wednesday, March 22, 2023 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM ET – click here to RSVP.
