Microsoft has announced the incorporation of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 into its Teams Premium, expanding the office tool’s features with AI-powered capabilities.

The incorporation of the GPT-3.5 AI language model means the premium tier of Microsoft Teams now has an ‘intelligent recap’ feature that automatically generates notes, tasks, and highlights of meetings.

Microsoft indicated that the move was spurred by the growing need for organizations to adapt to change, improve productivity, and reduce costs.

“Fortunately, modern tools powered by AI hold the promise to boost individual, team, and organizational-level productivity and fundamentally change how we work,” Microsoft said.

“This promise is rapidly becoming a reality. At Microsoft, we’re working to incorporate new, AI-powered capabilities across our consumer and enterprise products, including Microsoft Teams,” it added.

Microsoft Teams Premium, which was launched as a 30-day trial in December, is now available to everyone and has AI-enabled features such as branded meetings, custom meeting templates, and features like watermarking to better protect meeting contents.

“Built on the familiar, all-in-one collaborative experience of Microsoft Teams, Teams Premium brings the latest technologies, including Large Language Models powered by OpenAI’s GPT-3.5, to make meetings more intelligent, personalized, and protected—whether it’s one-on-one, large meetings, virtual appointments, or webinars,” the company said.

The biggest addition to Teams appears to be the ‘intelligent recap’, available in Teams Premium. Microsoft said customers can get these advanced meeting capabilities and more for one low cost of $10 per user per month. It added that “for a limited time, you can get Teams Premium for just $7 per user per month or 30 percent off the standard price.”

This move follows OpenAI’s decision to create and monetize a professional version of ChatGPT, a chatbot that Microsoft has invested billions of dollars in, and intends to incorporate into its web search engine Bing.

‘Intelligent recap’ offers several tools that make meetings easy. The feature uses OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 model to generate meeting notes and highlights even for those who weren’t present in a meeting.

“With intelligent recap in Teams premium, you’ll get automatically generated meeting notes, recommended tasks, and personalized highlights to help you get the information most important to you, even if you miss the meeting,” Microsoft said.

Other new features include the ability to review meeting recordings in shortest period, which is available for PowerPoint Live meeting recordings. AI-generated chapters divide the meeting into sections, making it easy for users to pick and choose the most relevant content. ‘Intelligent recap’ is designed to automatically generate meeting chapters based on the meeting transcript as well.

Another interesting feature is the ‘personalized timeline markers.’ It gives users the ability to privately catch up on the things they missed in a meeting using the ‘meeting recording.’ So you can quickly click and listen in on what you missed. Personalized timeline markers will expand to include when your name was mentioned and when a screen was shared.

“Soon, these personalized meeting highlights will expand to include speaker timeline markers that show you who spoke during the meeting, when they spoke, and allows you to jump to that moment,” Microsoft said, adding that “speaker timeline markers are intelligently organized by who you work most closely with, so you’ll never miss feedback shared from your manager in a meeting again.”

In addition, ‘intelligent recap’ helps users to focus on the meeting discussion itself and not on capturing notes. Microsoft said in the coming months, you’ll see key points and takeaways after the meeting, with AI-generated notes automatically created and powered by GPT-3.5. Follow-up is easy with AI-generated tasks and action items automatically suggested for you.

The company is also using the AI language model to solve one of the toughest collaboration challenges—working with people who natively speak different languages. With live translations, users can turn on live captions in Teams and see real-time captions in the spoken language.

“With live translations (for captions) now available in Teams Premium, you get AI-powered real-time translations from 40 spoken languages. Meeting participants can read captions in their own language, saving money and making meetings more productive and effortless,” Microsoft said, adding that only the meeting organizer needs to have Teams Premium for all meeting attendees to enjoy live translations.

Microsoft said the additional intelligent recap capabilities will be available in the second quarter of 2023. The company is keen on broadening its businesses with OpenAI. In addition to the Teams Premium’s AI incorporations, the company is reportedly moving to bring OpenAI technology to Word, PowerPoint, and Outlook.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has directed deposit money banks (DMBs) to begin the payment of the redesigned naira notes over the counter, reversing earlier directive that prohibited the banks from doing so.

The directive comes amid growing chaos emanating from scarcity of the redesigned naira notes, which has left people and businesses suffering across the country.

In a statement signed by the CBN’s Director, Corporate Communication, Osita Nwanisobi, the apex bank said the new directive is subject to a maximum daily payout limit of N20,000.

The earlier directive, which forbade banks from issuing the new naira notes from the counter, was meant to stop banks from making a few of their customers a priority, but it compounded the hardship unleashed by the scarcity of the new naira notes.

It was also undermining the circulation of the redesigned naira notes since the few ATMs dispensing them give out only N1,000 notes. The situation forces people to rely on lower denomination of the old naira notes (N200 & N500) to complement transactions, leaving a vacuum stymieing CBN’s efforts to mop up the old naira notes in circulation.

But in the statement, the CBN said it is committed to seeing to the effective distribution of the redesigned naira notes. The financial sector regulator urged Nigerians to be patient as it works assiduously to address the challenge of long queues at ATMs.

The statement said the CBN has observed with grave concern, the activities of persons who sell the newly redesigned banknotes and those who flagrantly abuse the legal tender by hurling wads of naira notes in the air and stamping on the currency at social functions.

“We have equally noticed the queues at Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) across the country and an upward trend in the cases of people stocking and aggregating the newly introduced banknotes they serially obtain from ATMs for reasons best known to them.

“Also worrisome are the reported cases of unregistered persons and non-bank officials swapping banknotes for members of the public, purportedly on behalf of the CBN.

“We wish to state unequivocally that, contrary to the practice of these unpatriotic persons, it is unlawful to sell the Naira, hurl (spray), or stamp on the currency under any circumstance whatsoever,” it said.

While Nigerians struggle to get hold of the newly introduced naira notes, scores have been noticed swapping them for profit.

The CBN said in the statement that the perpetrators are breaking the law. Quoting Section 21(4) of the CBN Act, the apex bank said: “It shall also be an offence punishable under Sub-section (1) of this section for any person to hawk, sell or otherwise trade in the Naira notes, coins or any other note issued by the Bank.”

The CBN said it is collaborating with the Nigeria Police, Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) and the Nigerian Financial Intelligence Unit (NFIU) to address the unpatriotic practice.

Nwanisobi admonishes members of the public to embrace and adopt other payment channels for their transactions.

However, the CBN reversing its earlier directive to banks regarding issuance of the new naira notes is seen as a sign of desperation to tackle the challenges of the redesigned naira notes implementation as its February 10 deadline draws near.

The central bank earlier fixed January 31 as the deadline for the old naira notes to be returned to banks, but was forced to extend it as the circulation of the new naira notes significantly stalls.

The central bank governor, Godwin Emefiele, had on Tuesday, assured the House committee looking into the policy that the public will be able to return their old naira notes to the banks after the deadline, but reverses himself after, reiterating that the old notes can only be deposited at the central bank post February 10.