Larry, the worst assistant

I work in the Microsoft ecosystem of applications … Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, etc… This morning, I thought it might be helpful if I looked at programming an AI assistant who could help me manage mundane tasks that I struggle with like keeping my calendar and setting OOO messages and whatnot.

It turns out that Copilot is embedded into Teams and can build AI assistants. So, I built one named Larry and configured Larry to be able to manage my Outlook calendar and set OOO messages, extract information from training sign-up sheets in Forms, and send messages and meeting invitations to a Teams group I manage.

Once configured, I asked Larry to reschedule a meeting from tomorrow morning to next Thursday and set an OOO message because I’m taking the next couple of days off. Larry said sure thing. I could feel his virtual smile.

A minute or so later, I noticed that neither was an OOO message set nor was the meeting rescheduled, so I asked Larry if he was going to do both things. No, Larry said, he could not do the work I asked him to do.

Separately, I asked my personal Copilot account why Larry didn’t do the work he said he’d do. Copilot said I probably needed to tweak Larry’s permissions.

I asked Larry how I could access his permissions. Larry abruptly ended the conversation. When I asked him why, he apologized. A couple of seconds later, I noticed that Larry had disappeared. I asked the Copilot AI embedded in Teams where Larry had gotten to and Copilot said it had no idea.

Larry was just gone.