Category: News

Microsoft has identified another service that its AI Copilot has not been available on. Today, Microsoft launched Copilot officially for the messaging service Telegram.

Word of warning: while you do not need a Microsoft account to communicate with the AI, it is necessary to part with your mobile phone number for verification purposes.

Here is how it works:

1. Open the Telegram app and search for Microsoft Copilot, or, open the official Microsoft Copilot Telegram page here.
2. Select I Accept when asked to do so to continue.
3. Provide Copilot with the device’s phone number for verification.

Once that is out of the way, you may interact with Copilot using text messages or by selecting one of the displayed ideas.

Note: Copilot limits interactions to 30 per day. This is not much and there is no option currently to increase the limit.

The bot accepts a few commands:

1. /restart to end the current chat and start over.
2. /ideas to display examples.
3. /share to get invites for friends.

The most important command is restart, as it erases the previous chat so that you can start a new one.

Interactions work as you expect them to work. Type a message and submit it to get an answer.

As is the case with all Copilot interactions, messages are send to Microsoft servers. They are processed there and then returned to Telegram.

The process was quick during tests. It is unclear whether that is going to change as the bot’s popularity may increase on the platform.

All in all, you do get the same experience that you get on other platforms that Copilot is available on. The experience is limited, because of the 30 chat turns limit and the inability to generate images at this point.

Verdict

Considering that you can interact with Copilot on other platforms as well, without handing over your phone number, most of you will probably shy away from the Telegram bot experience.

Have you interacted with Copilot or another AI before? Did you like it or find it useful?

Microsoft, Google, and other search engine companies have started to add AI to the search results. Google is rolling out AI Overviews to search. This feature displays AI generated content at the top of the results.

This change has severe implications for the World Wide Web. In this article, I’m making four predictions about the future of the WWW.

Not all sites and services will be around in 5 years

AI generated results will keep a portion of searchers on the search engine’s website. The answer may suffice for a good percentage of user searches.

This impacts sites that rely on traffic from search engines. Google says that sites listed by its AI Overviews feature have received more clicks, but it is too early to tell whether only a tiny percentage of sites really benefits from it. In any event, sites on the second or third party of results will likely get less traffic.

The same may be true for certain services. Search engines like Google added more and more tools and features. You can check the weather, convert currency, get translations, do calculations or directions right from Google.

In any event, the drive towards showing more information directly on search results pages will push lots of sites out of business.

Good news is that this may level the search playing field. Companies like OpenAI may create their own search engines, which threatens the dominance of Google.

AI favors large sites and data sources

Generative AI relies on data created by humans. Without that data, it would not be able to produce any results.

For search engines, large data sources are of greater interest than smaller ones. Giving the AI access to the entirety of Wikipedia or Reddit is better than having to parse millions of smaller sites for the information.

Larger sites benefit from this, as they may sell their data to AI companies. Smaller websites do not have the means to broker deals with these companies, which means that they won’t get any compensation for their data. While they may opt-out, this also means that they won’t receive any links when the AI includes them as a source.

Ultimately, small sites are at the receiving end again when it comes to this, while large sites have a new revenue source at their disposal.

Trust will play a major role

Can AI results be trusted? AIs may hallucinate, which means that they make things up. There is also the question about the actuality of data. Since AIs rely on human generated content, they may return content that is out of date or also incorrect.

Say, you search for instructions on making a change to your Windows system. AI may return instructions that work on older versions of Windows. While you may adjust the query, there is a chance that out of date content is returned.

Trust will also play a major role in the survival of websites. Trusted sites will continue to do well, as many searchers will favor them over AI generated content. Sites that have a loyal followship may also survive.

Personality and authenticity remains important

Bland sites that just rehash news stories will have it difficult in the future. They do not really provide much value, but the business model worked, especially for established sites that can rank for pretty much any topic they write about.

Information returned by AI has no personality. It is just a robot returning information. Your favorite reviewer of video games, movies, software applications, or cars, on the other hand, may have more to offer than just the information.

This personality and authenticity of writers, podcasters, or video creators drives users towards services and sites, and may make them follow certain sites or services.

These will continue to do well, as AI cannot compete with that or mimic it satisfyingly.

Now You: what is your take on AI integrations in search, or entirely AI-powered search engines?

DeepL Write Pro is a subscription-based AI writing assistant by DeepL, maker of the popular translation service.

The target audience is organizations and professionals. DeepL Write has been available as a free service for some time. You can feed it text to get improvement suggestions.

DeepL Write Pro takes the concept a step further. While it continues to give suggestions, these are now provided in real-time. Subscribers may also set different writing styles and tones to create results for specific audiences.

DeepL Write Pro launches with business, casual, academic, and simple writing styles, and friendly, diplomatic, confident, and enthusiastic tones.

DeepL says that Write Pro is available on the official website, desktop and mobile apps, browser extensions, and as integrations in services such as Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and Word, and many more.

Limitations: The main limitation at the time of writing is that DeepL Write Pro supports only the languages English and German. The creators promise to improve language support in the future.

DeepL promises maximum data security. Text are never stored without user consent and never used for AI training, according to the company. Organizations and businesses benefit from additional security features, including SSO-enabled logins and administrative controls.

As far as pricing is concerned, a single user DeepL Write Pro subscription is available for $10.99 per month, if paid annually. Switch that to monthly and the price jumps to $16.50 per user and month.

Closing Words

A lot of AI assisted writing helpers are coming on the market. Not all of these will be around in the coming years. DeepL Pro Write benefits from DeepL’s image as a company and its other services. The free version of DeepL Write is great for quick suggestions and it may help drive pro version signups.

These services can be useful, but this is up to the individual user or organization to decide. One question that will come up is whether they are useful enough to pay for them. Some AI writing services are free to use.

I like them, especially when writing in a foreign language. While it is still necessary to verify the output, they may help reduce spelling and grammar mistakes that you make, and also improve the tone or style of the text.

What about you? Have you tried AI writing assistants yet?