Big tech and the pursuit of AI dominance

What has been achieved on this video call? It takes Jared Spataro just a few clicks to find out. Microsoft’s head of productivity software pulls up a sidebar in Teams, a video-conferencing service. A 30-second pause ensues as an artificial-intelligence (AI) model somewhere in one of the firm’s data centres analyses a recording of the meeting so far. An accurate summary of your correspondent’s questions and Mr Spataro’s answers then pops up. Mr Spataro can barely contain his excitement. “This is not your daddy’s AI,” he beams.

Teams is not the only product into which Microsoft is implanting machine intelligence. On March 16th the company announced that almost all its productivity software, including Word and Excel, were getting the same treatment. Days earlier, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, unveiled a similar upgrade for its productivity products, such as Gmail and Sheets.