The year of artificial intelligence is nearly at a close, but the lasting effect of this revolutionary technology is expected to be felt for years to come.
Despite a lot of media hype around the technology, there are very few consumer facing products that are currently available. But Microsoft (MSFT) -) — which could be credited with jumpstarting the AI conversation with its $10 billion investment in OpenAI and its breakthrough product ChatGPT — will be debuting a new tool in a month that some analysts say will allow the company to maintain its lead over rival Google (GOOGL) -) for years to come.
Related: Microsoft Is Hiking Up the Price of Its Powerful New Office Software
Microsoft will debut Copilot for business customers on November 1. For $30 a month, Copilot will be "your everyday AI companion," incorporating all of the data available on the web, all of your work data and what you are doing on your computer "to provide better assistance" with whatever you task may be working on, according to Microsoft.
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"What I see is the potential for breakthrough in productivity. I really feel like with the pace of the fusion of AI, it's now or never. You wait and you're going to be left behind," Kate Johnson, CEO of Lumen Technologies told CNBC after two months of having 300 of her nearly 30,000 employees using a test version of the product.
Google is working on similar consumer-facing AI tools for businesses with the same $30 per month price point, but at least one analyst believes that Microsoft's lead in the space is entrenched and it will be hard for Google to catch up to its main competition.
"I actually believe Google will continue to be the leader in search and Microsoft will continue to be the leader in these productivity tools. While you may see a few customers jump over the fence over time , I don't think that this so much compels the switching as much as it does really lock customers in," Daniel Newman, CEO of Futurum Group, told CNBC.
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