There is Al in your productivity tools too

Over the past few years, Al has found its way into the apps and services we use every day: from email to Excel spreadsheets

- Abhishek Baxi

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) can easily stake claim to the honours board for 2023. The sudden buzz brought generative AI into the lexicon of laypeople and technology companies like Microsoft, Google and Adobe scrambled to announce a slew of transformational capabilities in search as well as productivity and creative tools.

Some of the "Copilot" announcements by Microsoft or the AI enhancements to Google Workspace are yet to roll out. That said, though, you can experience Al in everyday tasks at college or work even now. For, over the past few years, it has found its way into the apps and services we use every day. Several of the "smart" features are essentially powered by AI. And while we will see more Al integration soon in Microsoft 365 apps, there's a bunch of nifty features you can start using at once.

WORD

Editor: A lot of my friends use Grammarly to avoid writing mistakes but aren't familiar with the much more advanced Microsoft Editor built in with Word (and available as a browser extension).

Editor not only suggests grammar and spelling corrections but also helps refine writing and avoid common mistakes. It has a bunch of settings that can be enabled or disabled according to one's preference, like writing inclusive content (chairperson instead of chairman), avoiding cliches and colloquial usage, or correcting sensitive geopolitical references.

Dictate & Transcribe: One of the departments where Windows and Word have improved dramatically is dictation. From bare-bones and instructional voice-to-text capability, it has evolved into a feature that allows you to dictate an entire email or document with significant accuracy. It's unbelievable once you try it. I have written several email drafts like this while building LEGO sets with my child.

Pro tip: A better mic improves speech recognition and accuracy.