Microsoft Gives Productivity Tools More AI Chops Emerging Tech

Microsoft on Wednesday announced new artificial intelligence features and functionality for several of its flagship products and services, including Office 365, Cortana and Bing, at an event in San Francisco. Building on the progress the company has made in integrating AI over the past year, the new enhancements are designed to help users perform increasingly complex and complicated tasks. "AI has come a long way in the ability to find information, but making sense of that information is the real challenge," said Kristina Behr, a partner design and planning program manager with Microsoft's Artificial Intelligence and Research group. One of the advances, machine reading comprehension, will improve an AI-based system's understanding of context -- for example, recognizing that one's cousin is a family member. Bing users will get more personalized answers, Microsoft said, such as restaurant recommendations based on travel destinations, or a greater variety of answers to offer different perspectives on a topic.