Among many other Artificial Intelligence (AI) features and products announced at Microsoft’s Build Conference, the company has unveiled an AI-powered tool that can build entire website pages for users with a simple text prompt.
Copilot for Power Pages
Every year, the tech giant hosts the Build Conference which is meant for software and web developers to hear the latest announcements on Windows, Microsoft’s productivity apps, Azure cloud services, and more.
As such, since this year’s conference began yesterday in Seattle, Microsoft has announced many new features and products, most of which involve AI which is the current buzz in the tech industry.
One such feature is Copilot for Power Pages which introduces AI capabilities to the low-code business website creation tool. The AI assistant will enable the tool to create and change images and site design themes and generate text, forms, chatbots, and web page layouts when given prompts.
“Today at Microsoft Build, we are thrilled to share new features and capabilities for Microsoft Power Pages. Next-generation AI enhancements via Copilot in Power Pages, now in public preview (in North America only), is revolutionizing how to build and launch data-centric business websites,” said Sangya Singh, Vice President of Power Pages, in a blog post.
Users can, for instance, describe the type of form they need to construct in natural language, and Copilot will build it and automatically create the required back-end database tables in Microsoft Dataverse. Then, within Copilot, the tables can be modified, expanded upon, or eliminated using natural language.
4. Copilot in Power Pages
Generate text, build detailed forms and chatbots—all in a matter of minutes.
Leverage the power of natural language input and intelligent suggestions for unmatched efficiency!! pic.twitter.com/m6y1j6I6ZV
— Shubham Saboo (@Saboo_Shubham_) May 23, 2023
“Power Pages now allows you to go from no code (describing the site via natural language) to low code (editing the website design and layouts using the design studio) to pro code (building advanced customization with familiar web frameworks) seamlessly,” she said.
“The power to transform simple descriptions into text content not only slashes your development time but also puts customizability at your fingertips. Adjust the message, tone, and length effortlessly with a click or specific instruction. It’s content creation, redefined,” Singh added.
Singh emphasizes that Copilot in Power Pages is not a technology that could or should be used to create entire spam sites, but should simplify the development process of business websites for developers.
She also warned that the Power Pages Copilot is not an ‘automatic’ AI-pilot for generating complete websites but is instead an ‘AI assistant’ to a human website maker where the maker can ask for suggestions on how to build different components of a business data-centric website.
Feedback and Guardrails Against Hallucinations
The tool also enables the creation of embedded chatbots that answer any question asked by visitors on the website. Copilot gives the chatbot generative capabilities to provide “concise responses complete with relevant links to optimize both administrative functionality and website engagement experiences.”
The new feature also comes with the ability for administrators to monitor and control the websites created. The tool will come with Data Loss Prevention (DLP ) capabilities which will enable the admin to control the anonymity of the website’s data.
Administrators will also be granted governance control to block anonymous access to the website and prevent data leaks.
So far, generative AI has been criticized for “hallucinations” where applications powered by this technology provide false information in their responses. As such, adding these capabilities to a tool raises such concerns seeing as the issue has not yet been solved.
In response to these fears, Singh asserts that Copilot in Power Pages, which uses OpenAI‘s GPT-3.5 model, is built with “guardrails” to guard against the possibility of such problems.
Singh said, “We take the website maker’s user prompts to the Copilot, get suggestions from the large language model, and do a lot of processing, like offensive content filtering, before displaying suggestions back to the maker.”
“If Copilot’s suggestions are irrelevant or inappropriate, makers can easily report the AI-generated output via a thumbs-down gesture in our experience and provide additional feedback,” she added.
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