Introducing Microsoft Project Sophia
I am thrilled to share with you Project Sophia. a new AI-powered business research canvas from Microsoft. While this is an early MVP (minimum viable product), I think it can be a game-changer for anyone who wants to solve complex, cross-domain business problems with data.
How is this different?
The team started by reimagining how an AI-enabled product should work. Unlike Copilot, where you must know what you want to do, Sophia guides you through the process and uses AI (Artificial Intelligence) to generate answers.
You start by asking any business question across the business domains in your organization. From there, you can start your research using the data you have, be it structured or unstructured. Sophia uses LLM (large language model) technology to automatically generate blueprints, which are information-rich building blocks that provide structure to your research. Each blueprint has a textual overview, visual representations of insights, and a range of suggested next actions.
You can also use the AI cursor, a new innovative, fully contextual chat experience, to dive deeper into any areas of the research journey, triggering a conversation with Sophia who will help you with further explorations and suggestions.
Project Sophia Features
One of the features of Project Sophia is the Business Process Guide, which guides you through the process of achieving a predefined outcome for a specific high-value business task. The first Business Process Guide supported in this preview release is Account Planning or Sales Territory Planning.
To show you how Project Sophia works in action, I’ve created a video walkthrough below. You’ll see how Project Sophia helps me analyze Power Platform Licensing to understand how I can license Power Pages. I’ll upload the PDF licensing guide and start the process. I’ll then use the AI cursor to ask questions, get insights, and refine my approach.
Try it out today
Project Sophia is currently in preview, and you can try it at http://aka.ms/ProjectSophia. There, you can also watch an overview session, see a demo of the AI in action, and even try the preview for yourself. Microsoft is looking for feedback and suggestions to improve and to add more capabilities to Project Sophia.
Project Sophia is a new generation of AI-first applications that can redefine how complex business decisions are made. I’m excited by the possibilities and look forward to seeing more of this product.
March 06, 2024 at 5:04 am, Mike Allen said:
This looks interesting, Treb. Business Process has become an orphan of IT. It’s time that utility and function became priorities. Thanks for the blog. I’ll have a look at Sofia 🙂