09/08/2026
I think we’re moving into a different phase of AI now.
For the last couple of years, most people have used AI like a very smart search engine.
You ask a question, it gives an answer, and sometimes you double-check it because you’re not sure whether to trust it 😅
Tools like NotebookLM and Microsoft 365 Copilot are changing that approach completely.
Instead of pulling information from the entire internet, these tools work from your own information.
📝 Your meeting notes
📧 Your emails
📁 Your documents
📈 Your spreadsheets
💬 Your Teams chats
You give the AI the specific material you want it to use, and it reasons over that instead of guessing from random online sources.
One of the biggest frustrations with AI has been confidence.
People worry about “hallucinations”, which is the slightly strange term used when AI confidently makes something up.
By narrowing the information down to trusted business content, the answers become much more useful and grounded.
Microsoft is now expanding these notebook-style features inside its ecosystem, and honestly, I can see why.
Imagine finishing a Teams meeting and having the transcript, notes, files, and action points automatically pulled together into one workspace.
Or taking a photo of a whiteboard on your phone and turning it into structured notes, a presentation, or even a spreadsheet.
That’s where this starts becoming genuinely practical for businesses.
It reduces the amount of time people spend hunting for information, rewriting notes, or piecing together updates from five different places.
I think that’s the real story with AI at work.
The biggest productivity gains will come from removing all the small bits of admin and information overload that quietly eat away at the day.
Not from replacing your people 😅
Of course, there’s still a balance to strike around security and permissions, especially when company data is involved.
👉 If AI could take one repetitive task off your plate right now, what would you choose?