Microsoft appears to have pushed the ability to upload documents, screenshots, and images to Windows 11's Copilot AI assistant, allowing you to ask it to make sense of documents stored on your PC. Being able to "query" a document is a subtly powerful capability that you may have never taken advantage of. Unfortunately, this new capability may suffer from the same problem that other LLMs might struggle with: persistence. "Querying" a document means asking Copilot questions about it. "What next steps should I take?" Ideally, Copilot should be able to take an involved, complex document like a contract and allow the average user (you and I) to make sense of it all.

Microsoft's 2023 Future of Finance Trends report found that financial teams and leaders are struggling to strike the right balance between strategic innovation and protecting the financial health of their organisations, with 88 per cent feeling overwhelmed by the amount of data they are handling. The report concludes that AI and automation are vital for growth, with 82 per cent of finance leaders believing that technology is necessary to support business goals by freeing up valuable time for finance teams. However, 89 per cent of organisations do not have integrated automation, analytics or AI, according to KPMG's 2021 The Future of Finance report, meaning that they are losing out on valuable benefits in terms of time and money. "The key to advancing business and staying on top of the problems we're currently facing is to be data-driven by building predictive and analytical capabilities that will deliver the right insights to make well-informed decisions," says Roni Karassik, director of product for Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services and industry AI. "AI applications provide three overarching benefits –transforming the customer experience, empowering employees and providing deeper insights." Firms are looking to use AI to do more with less by automating and processing data more effectively.

If you received this in your inbox, thank you for signing up and your vote of confidence. If you're reading this as a post on our site, sign up here so you can receive it directly in the future. Every week, I'll take a look at the hottest fintech news of the previous week. This will include everything from funding rounds to trends to an analysis of a particular space to hot takes on a particular company or phenomenon. There's a lot of fintech news out there and it's my job to stay on top of it -- and make sense of it -- so you can stay in the know.

ChatGPT is getting all the attention as of late, but modern AI technologies have a range of use cases beyond finally making Bing useful. One emerging trend is putting AI to work to aid with the frustrating and laborious task of filing and auditing corporate expense reports. Today, Microsoft and American Express announced a deal that aims to do just that. The companies agreed to expand their decades-long partnership to build solutions that leverage Microsoft Cloud and AI technologies, starting with expense report management. According to Amex, the initial solution will leverage machine learning and AI to automate expense reporting and approvals.

This year at Microsoft Ignite we explore how organizations can activate AI and automation directly in their business workflows and empower developers to use those same intelligent building blocks to deliver their own differentiated experiences. The global pandemic has created unprecedented levels of uncertainty, as well as the need to sense and reshape our physical and digital environments, sometimes in completely new ways. Leaders across industries recognize innovation as the only path forward. Critically, we've seen a shift from "innovation for innovation's sake" toward a desire to lower operating costs, anticipate trends, reduce carbon footprints, and improve customer and employee experiences. Automation and AI are key ingredients for digital perseverance and helping organizations drive efficiency.

Aircraft manufacturing company Boeing partners with technology giant Microsoft to accelerate its digital transformation journey. This strategic partnership with Microsoft will allow Boeing to use the Microsoft Cloud and AI capabilities to upgrade its IT infrastructure and mission-critical applications with intelligent new data-driven solutions, allowing for new ways of working, operating, and conducting business. Boeing was one of the first companies to use the Microsoft Cloud, storing multiple digital aviation apps on Microsoft Azure and leveraging artificial intelligence to improve customer outcomes and streamline operations. According to the plan, Boeing will leverage Microsoft Cloud and AI capabilities to upgrade essential infrastructure, optimize business processes, and several other tasks. Chief Information Officer and Senior Vice President of Information Technology & Data Analytics at Boeing, Susan Doniz, said, "Today's announcement represents a significant investment in Boeing's digital future. Our strategic partnership with Microsoft will help us realize our cloud strategy by removing infrastructure restraints, properly scaling to unlock innovation, and further strengthening our commitment to sustainable operations."

It is easy to give credit to the pandemic for the radical acceleration of the digital world. While it is true that it ignited digital transformation, it has always been our destiny to transform the world digitally. Fast moving companies didn't need the pandemic to drive them forward quickly- they just did it. It is quite amazing when we take a step back and realize where we were five years ago and where we are now. I sleep, eat, and breathe the tech world, and for 30 years, a unique characteristic of technology and innovation is that it comes in waves, radically accelerated by certain factors.

This blog post has been co-authored by Slawek Kierner, SVP of Enterprise Data & Analytics, Humana and Tie-Yan Liu, Assistant Managing Director, Microsoft Research China. Trips to the hospital happen. And while everyone in the industry strives to deliver world-class care for in-patient experiences, everyone--patients and care teams alike, would prefer to avoid those stays at the hospital. The teams at Humana believed they had enough data to explore the possibility of proactively identifying when patients were heading toward a high-risk event, and they put Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare and AI technology to the test. Humana's questions were straightforward: How do we take the data we have today and use it proactively?

Microsoft is buying AI speech tech firm Nuance for $19.7 billion, bolstering the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant's prowess in voice recognition and giving it further leverage in the health care market, where Nuance sells many products. Microsoft will pay $56 per share for Nuance, a 23 percent premium over the company's closing price last Friday. The deal includes Nuance's net debt. Nuance is best known for its Dragon software, which uses deep learning to transcribe speech and improves its accuracy over time by adapting to a user's voice. Nuance has licensed this tech for many services and applications, including, most famously, Apple's digital assistant Siri.

Today marks the start of RSNA 2020, the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. I participated in my first RSNA 35 years ago and I am super excited--as I am every year--to reconnect with my radiology colleagues and friends and learn about the latest medical and scientific advances in our field. Of course, RSNA will be very different this year. Instead of traveling to Chicago to attend sessions and presentations, and wander the exhibits, I'll experience it all online. While I will miss the fun, excitement, and opportunities to connect that come with being there in person, I am amazed by what a rich and comprehensive conference the organizers of RSNA 2020 have put together using the advanced digital tools that we have at hand now.