Zoho Joins the Generative AI Parade, Microsoft Announces Copilot in SharePoint, More News
The list of vendors jumping on the generative AI bandwagon continues to grow. While the big names vendors including Google and Microsoft established their foothold early, other vendors like Zoom have been following close behind.
This week it's Austin, Texas-based Zoho's turn, with the release of Zia, the company's new "homegrown" AI engine based on OpenAI’s technology.
According to a company statement, Zia will first be included in 13 of Zoho's apps focused primarily on supporting customer operations, with the promise of more to come.
This is just the beginning of Zoho's wider AI strategy. In the coming months the company will make it possible to integrate Zia with other third-party AI models in much the same way it has done with GPT-4. Its longer-term plan is to develop generative AI in-house in part to help ensure the data that is being used in the AI is kept private.
Zoho is also developing proprietary Large Language Models (LLMs) capable of conversing, summarizing, paraphrasing and adapting to new tasks with zero-shot learning techniques. Zero-shot learning is the ability of an LLM to classify new, unseen examples that belong to classes that were not present in the training data.
Zia is available by default in Zoho's applications. Integrations for Zoho Desk, Cliq and Writer are available in Zoho Marketplace while all other OpenAI integrations are available within their respective Zoho products, built to work in tandem with Zia.
Samsung Bans Use of ChatGPT, Other LLMs
Privacy is increasingly important as generative AI's reach into the workplace grows. Only this week San Jose, Calif.-based Samsung Electronics announced that it is banning the use of AI services like ChatGPT in its mobile and appliances division after what the company described as “misuse” of the technology.
Samsung isn't the only company that has restricted the use of ChatGPT. Financial firms like Goldman Sachs have also banned it amidst growing privacy concerns related to uploading internal data into the tool.
According to Bloomberg reports, Samsung informed employees of the decisions in a memo, expressing concerns about the inability to retrieve and delete data entered into AI platforms including Bing and Bard.
According to the memo, Samsung engineers accidentally leaked source code in early April by uploading it into ChatGPT.
OpenAI made two changes to its data usage policy in March to address the problem. The first assured users that it would not use data submitted by customers to train its models. The second indicated that any data sent through its API would be deleted after 30 days.
During the week, data privacy provider Private AI launched PrivateGPT, a “privacy layer” for large language models (LLMs). Microsoft is also planning a privacy-focused version of the ChatGPT chatbot for a number of regulated verticals like healthcare, according to reports in the Information.
Data privacy is an ongoing concern in the digital workplace and the influx of chatbots built on generative AI will only aggravate the situation.
SharePoint Gets Its Own Generative AI Boost
Meanwhile, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft's march to integrate GPT-4 into its products continues with the announcement of Copilot in SharePoint. The company made the announcement during its Microsoft 365 conference in Las Vegas, although the feature is not yet available for preview until the end of this year.
According to Jeff Teper, president of collaborative apps and platforms, Copilot in SharePoint will be built on Microsoft’s Copilot System, which uses Microsoft Graph data from across the organization to offer answers to questions in natural language.
Teper writes: “Copilot in SharePoint also takes your existing document or presentation and turns it into a page that uses the best web design visuals of SharePoint. It can help you rewrite key passages of text on the page too, helping you strike just the right tone that will drive engagement with your readers.”
Adam Harmatz, VP of program management for Microsoft's collaborative apps and platform added in a related blog post that Copilot will simplify the creation of sites and pages. "Copilot in SharePoint turns your words into SharePoint sites and page. If you can describe the site or page, Copilot in SharePoint will begin to create it for you, and then work with you to edit and refine it. And all within our existing commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise.”
A few other SharePoint announcements are worth a mention. A new web part is on the way in the coming months called Stream SharePoint Web Part that will provide inline playback for single and multiple videos on SharePoint pages.
Learning Opportunities
There is also a new OneDrive “experience” that according to the announcement will enhance and simplify access to user files.
Though there were few specifics provided around Copilot in SharePoint and the other updates, Microsoft Build takes place later this month with the promise of more, related news.
Simpplr Raises $70M
Elsewhere Redwood City, Calif.-based Simpplr announced the conclusion of a successful $70 million Series D funding round. According to the company, it will use the money to continue the expansion of its AI-driven experience platform.
According to the company, more than one million people around the world use Simpplr’s platform to build personalized experiences designed to keep employees engaged.
The funding round follows the release last month of the new Employee Listening solution, which provides real-time insights into employee sentiment. Simpplr's platform combines active listening through surveys with passive listening through AI-powered sentiment analysis based on millions of data points across the platform.
The company noted that according to KornFerry's Future of Work series, the US will have a deficit of six million workers by 2030.
“Measuring employee experience in real-time has taken on a new urgency, with internal teams tasked with prioritizing communication, connection, and community,” said founder and CEO Dhiraj Sharma in the statement. Sharma said the funding will help Simpplr address the issue through continued development of the platform and through new hires.
Simpplr faces stiff competition in the market with competitors including ServiceNow and Workday. Sharma founded Simpplr in 2014 and has raised $131 million to date.
Karbon AI Brings Generative AI to Accountants' Inboxes
Finally this week, Sausalito, Calif.-based Karbon has launched Karbon AI, which embeds a GPT-powered tool in its accounting practice management software.
Karbon AI will initially focus on increasing email's effectiveness. Like many other applications of generative AI in the workplace, Karbon AI can break down long emails into key subjects and elements, flag important emails and draft emails based on workflow and tasks.
But there's more on the way, said Karbon chief product officer Sara Goepel in a statement. She said this first release focuses on reducing the time financial professionals spend in email every day, which can amount to 16.5 hours per week.
Karbon was founded in 2014, claims over 3,000 accounting firms as customers and has raised $92 million in funding to date.
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About the Author
David is a European-based journalist of 35 years who has spent the last 15 following the development of workplace technologies, from the early days of document management, enterprise content management and content services. Now, with the development of new remote and hybrid work models, he covers the evolution of technologies that enable collaboration, communications and work and has recently spent a great deal of time exploring the far reaches of AI, generative AI and General AI.
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