AI for the Masses
We have seen a huge surge in popularity in AI recently, but it isn’t new in technology. Artificial Intelligence has been around for many years, in different forms, but the changes that have driven the boom have been the accessibility of AI services.
Gone are the massive resource requirements and scarce expertise in building AI applications — we now have competition fighting to give us access to some of the most powerful applications we have seen so far, and the abilities and application just keeps on growing. ChatGPT, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot are among the top services that are available to everyone, giving users the ability to find answers and solutions at their fingertips.
Microsoft’s Copilot family is every-growing, with the AI assistant added to multiple existing services and applications to great effect. Meetings on Teams now has a minute-taker, Word can summarise and suggest changes for your documents, and PowerPoint can design slides and generate content to your specification. This is all very useful, but it is taken much further with Microsoft’s Copilot Studio — a tool that leverages the speed and assistance of Copilot, but allows you to create your own applications.
This is a low/no-code solution, which means that you doo not need to be a software engineer to use it. Anyone can create powerful applications and workflows, from question-and-answer bots for a website to complex business management tools with triggered actions and communications. The best part is that it is all done using the same natural language application that we are all now very familiar with, which means the barrier to entry has been completely removed and replaced with an encouraging and friendly welcome.
Building low/no-code applications also isn’t new, and Microsoft have pioneered this space with Power Platform, Power Apps and Power Pages. Adding Copilot to these tools has now made creating these applications so much easier, not just the conception but the maintenance too, as users can call upon the power of AI to transform, amend and suggest to continue to elevate the success of these new applications. The speed at which a high UX application can be created is truly astonishing — whether it is an internal form to manage business assets or to get inspiration for a wider team to base their efforts — it can be built and delivered to the right hands in moments. The only knowledge you need arm yourself with is your idea, and how to convey that to Copilot in a way it understands.
This innovation and cost-effective journey to build applications is going to make waves, and I think it should. However, I do not think it is the way to create enterprise applications or robust business workflows — not yet. We still need to have the control over every aspect of these types of applications and services, and whereas these platforms and Copilots do make it easier and faster to create, the polish isn’t apparent and the aspects of the software development lifecycle become rather fluid. My opinion here is that this is the perfect place to lay a foundation — create a proof of concept, get inspiration, or simply investigate what can be done — then go through the normal channels to build a secure and managed application or service that can be tested and proven at an enterprise level.