OpenAI productivity suite could change the way users create documents

OpenAI’s planned productivity suite could dismantle traditional habits of how users create and consume documents in the same the way the company changed browsing and search habits.

“OpenAI is increasingly seeing itself as a productivity tool, and that would include the need to address actual creation tools like Office does,” said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates.

OpenAI hasn’t officially announced a product, but The Information reported (subscription required) that the generative AI (genAI) company has already designed a rival to the dominant productivity tools.

But good luck getting customers to move from Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, analysts said, noting that the top two productivity suites are well entrenched among users and organizations.

OpenAI is already including certain elements of a productivity suite in its offerings, such as multiple export format support, said Wayne Kurtzman, research vice president of collaboration and communities at IDC. The feature is available in ChatGPT features such as Canvas, which “is a new interface for working with ChatGPT on writing and coding projects that require editing and revisions,” according to OpenAI’s website.

“That can be construed, correctly or not, as starting to build a productivity suite,” Kurtzman said.

IDC sees the market favoring newer digital experiences in creating and consuming content, he said. “Whether OpenAI sees this as an opportunity they would like to pursue in new ways is yet to be seen,” Kurtzman said.

The future of productivity and collaboration suites lies in user interface simplification via genAI, said J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst on Forrester’s Future of Work team. He described it as “a lot less pulling down menus or drawing and a lot more prompt engineering and providing sources to the AI so it can compose the asset.”

Document creation could look something like this: GenAI would take a first swing at creating a business document that the user then edits, iterates, and finalizes. That approach will become much more common.

Users will go “over the top,” asking Microsoft’s Copilot to create PowerPoint presentations, specifying the documents such as meeting notes or oral instructions that it should use to create the deck.

“I predict that, by 2029, Microsoft PowerPoint will hide or remove 80% of the elements on the Ribbon, the set of navigation controllers. Why? Because you won’t need them anymore; you will go ‘over the top,’” Gownder said.

OpenAI trying to innovate in this area makes sense; companies like Zoom and beautiful.ai already do this, though not to the level of sophistication users will see in the future with Microsoft’s suite, Gownder said. “…Entering this space, for OpenAI, is a lot riskier, because of its partial ownership by Microsoft and because Copilot uses OpenAI’s models,” he said.

Microsoft is already heading in the direction of making Copilot its main interface to create documents, spreadsheets and presentations, the company’s chief product officer of experiences and devices, Aparna Chennapragada, told Computerworld in a recent interview.

Google has already integrated genAI capabilities into Workspace, but hasn’t managed to capture much market share from Microsoft, Gold said. “But like so many other companies have found when they try to compete with Office, it’s very hard to have much impact,” he said.

Gold floated the idea of OpenAI possibly leveraging open-source tools such as OpenOffice or LibreOffice, which could help from a time-to-market and cost perspective. “Let the open ecosystem provide the necessary capabilities, which already results in a pretty rich productivity suite, and just have OpenAI do the integration of AI tools,” he said.

There remain a lot of open questions about OpenAI’s ability to deliver a productivity suite, which isn’t easy, said Jeff Kagan, an independent analyst.

OpenAI needs the talent, product groups, and market share to carve out a sizable niche, Kagan said. “I don’t expect Microsoft to sit back. I expect they will quickly intensify their offerings to hang onto their market share,” he said.

Also, if OpenAI CEO Sam Altman decides to implement competing features, he will need to think hard about the relationship with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

“It’s still way too early to have any idea what the next step will be. Stay tuned,” Kagan said.OpenAI productivity suite could change the way users create documents – ComputerworldRead More