Emails into Insights, Documents into Dialogs

In 2024 we learned a lot about how AI is impacting work. People report that they're saving 30 minutes a day using AI, and the world's largest randomized controlled trial of AI in the workplace reveals they’re creating 10% more documents, reading 11% fewer e-mails, and spending 4% less time on e-mail.

The fact that we’re already observing significant impact is interesting because, honestly, 2024 was also the year of using AI in the most boring ways possible. Right now, people are pretty much just using AI to summarize the documents they need to read and write emails for them, if they're using it at all. In 2025, Microsoft will turn 50, and the wealth of knowledge the company has built over half a century of pioneering productivity solutions will supercharge how AI helps people summarize documents and write emails.

But the early glimpses we got this year of how people are starting to use Copilot suggests AI will teach us new ways to think about productivity as well. If 2024 was the year of taking what we know and applying it to how we use AI at work, 2025 can be the year of taking a fresh look at work given AI. Work has always been purposeful, persistent, and collaborative, but AI is fundamentally redefining how computing supports these essential aspects. Let’s look at how.

Purposeful: From executing tasks to unlocking potential.

People can now directly express their purpose, rather than having to translate it into computer-understandable actions. But expressing purpose is still hard to do. Decades of research and experience have taught us that recognition is easier than recall, and prompt support strategies are proving to be powerful tools here.

But we are learning that AI can go even further by prompting people to fully articulate their goals and explore new directions. Right now, AI simply obeys commands. Looking forward, it will also challenge people to think differently.

Persistent: From storing documents to sustaining dialogs.

Currently, most conversations with AI are ephemeral. People engage in individual sessions that can be quite useful on their own, but must reestablish context every time they return. This is at odds with the fact that work takes place over time. Fifty years ago, Microsoft began its journey by helping people create documents to digitally persist knowledge.

But the nature of knowledge artifacts is evolving. Much of the knowledge people return to is now generated through conversation, whether with other people or AI, and reused not only by people but also by AI systems to ground their interactions. Microsoft was a document company, but now must become a dialog company.

Collaborative: From working alone to thinking together.

Given the importance of conversations, we are embedding AI into collaborative spaces. While work is inherently collaborative, people mostly use AI on their own right now. One of the most compelling Copilot experiences is in Teams meetings, because AI enhances collaboration by summarizing discussions, suggesting action items, and even prompting attendees to engage in more meaningful conversations. Microsoft’s decades of experience supporting collaboration, managing permissions, and facilitating sharing are proving invaluable as we integrate AI into these spaces.

But AI’s ability to process input from multiple people at scale will also disrupt collaboration in more profound ways. We already see people using Excel to extract themes from columns of text, where each row represents an idea from a different person. By leveraging AI’s strengths in planning and synthesis, this kind of uncoordinated large-scale collaboration will make it possible to harness collective intelligence, enabling groups to solve problems and create knowledge more effectively than ever before.

As we move into 2025, AI is set to transform all aspects of work, but only if we are able to build on what we already know about productivity while being open to learning. This past year taught us that there are new ways AI can drive purpose, sustain persistence, and foster collaboration. With Microsoft celebrating its 50th anniversary, here’s to the next 50 years of turning emails into insights and documents into dialogs!