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See also: Software ChatGPT Plugins
The phrase AI in software, or AI-powered software products, covers the integration of artificial intelligence, especially large language models and generative AI, into commercial software products across categories such as productivity, creativity, communications, customer support, analytics, sales, security, design, video, audio, and developer tools. Between late 2022 and 2026, almost every major software vendor released some form of AI assistant, copilot, or autonomous agent, often charging a premium per user. Microsoft, Google, Adobe, Salesforce, Apple, Zoom, Notion, Atlassian, Intercom, HubSpot, Canva, ByteDance, Blackmagic Design, and dozens of startups built generative features directly into the products that knowledge workers use every day.
The modern wave of AI integration into commercial software began with the public release of ChatGPT by OpenAI on November 30, 2022, although several products predate this milestone. Otter.ai, founded in 2016 as AISense, had been transcribing meetings with neural networks for years, and GitHub Copilot became generally available in June 2022. After ChatGPT showed that conversational language models could reliably help with writing, summarization, and coding, the rate of integration accelerated dramatically. Notion shipped Notion AI in February 2023, Microsoft announced Microsoft 365 Copilot in March 2023, Adobe launched Firefly in beta the same week, and within twelve months almost every major software-as-a-service vendor had a generative AI offering.[^msft1][^notion1][^firefly1]
Three commercial patterns emerged. The first was the copilot, an in-product assistant that can answer questions, summarize content, and draft text or code at the user's request. Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, Adobe Firefly inside Photoshop, and Slack AI all fit this pattern. The second was the agent, a system that takes multi-step actions on behalf of the user, such as Salesforce Agentforce, Sierra AI, Intercom Fin, Cursor's composer mode, and Devin. The third was the AI feature retrofitted into existing workflows, such as Photoshop Generative Fill, Premiere Pro Generative Extend, DaVinci Resolve's Magic Mask, and the Magic suite inside Canva.[^salesforce1][^adobe1][^canva1]
Pricing also followed three patterns. Vendors either bundled AI into existing plans (Apple Intelligence, Coda 4.0, Brave Leo's free tier), charged a fixed per-user add-on (Microsoft 365 Copilot at $30 per user per month, JetBrains AI Assistant), or used consumption-based metering (Microsoft Security Copilot at $4 per Security Compute Unit hour, Power BI Copilot tied to Fabric capacity).[^msft2][^secco1][^pbi1]
AI features in commercial software predate the generative AI boom by decades. Spell check and grammar check were among the earliest examples, with statistical methods refined throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Google launched Smart Compose in Gmail in 2018, a neural network that proposed the next few words of an email. Otter.ai released its first transcription product the same year, and Grammarly, founded in 2009, had been using machine learning on writing suggestions for over a decade before ChatGPT arrived. Salesforce launched its first Einstein platform in 2016, well before generative models, focused on predictive lead scoring and forecasting.[^einstein1]
The transformer-era shift began in 2021. GitHub Copilot launched as a technical preview in June 2021, powered by OpenAI Codex, and reached general availability for individual developers in June 2022 at $10 per month.[^ghcopilot1] By the time it left preview, more than 1.2 million developers had signed up. GitHub reported in 2022 that Copilot was already suggesting 40 percent of newly written code in supported languages.
November 30, 2022 reset expectations across the industry. Within months, every category of business software announced a generative AI roadmap. Notion shipped Notion AI on February 22, 2023, offering writing, summarization, brainstorming, and translation inside Notion documents at $10 per member per month.[^notion1] Microsoft announced Microsoft 365 Copilot on March 16, 2023, demonstrating Word drafts, Excel formulas, PowerPoint slide generation, and Outlook email triage. Adobe announced Firefly on March 21, 2023 and brought Generative Fill into Photoshop's public beta on May 23, 2023.[^firefly1][^firefly2]
The rest of 2023 brought a steady stream of releases. Microsoft Security Copilot was announced in March. Microsoft Edge integrated Bing Chat in February, with a sidebar that could summarize the open page or compose drafts. Opera released Aria, integrated into the Opera browser, on May 24. Salesforce previewed Einstein Copilot at Dreamforce in September. Zoom launched AI Companion to all paid accounts in September. Microsoft 365 Copilot reached general availability for enterprise on November 1, 2023 at $30 per user per month with a 300-seat minimum that was later removed. Microsoft Loop, the collaborative canvas product, reached general availability on November 15, 2023 with Copilot suggestions baked in.[^msft1][^msft3][^secco1][^zoomai1][^loop1]
2024 became the year of agents and on-device AI. Slack AI launched in February 2024 with thread summaries, channel recaps, and natural-language search. Salesforce released Einstein Copilot for general availability on April 25, 2024 and unveiled Agentforce at Dreamforce on September 12, 2024, with CEO Marc Benioff publicly committing to one billion agents by the end of 2025. Microsoft Security Copilot became generally available on April 1, 2024. Apple announced Apple Intelligence at WWDC on June 10, 2024 and started rolling out the first features on October 28, 2024 with iOS 18.1. HubSpot Breeze launched at INBOUND on September 18, 2024. Adobe shipped Generative Extend into Premiere Pro beta on October 14, 2024.[^slackai1][^salesforce2][^salesforce3][^secco1][^apple1][^breeze1][^extend1]
2025 brought autonomous agents and AI-first browsers into the mainstream. Cursor crossed one million daily active users and roughly $1 billion in annualized revenue by November. Microsoft 365 Copilot passed 20 million paid seats in 2026 reporting. OpenAI launched the ChatGPT Atlas browser on October 21, 2025, built on Chromium with an agent mode that can navigate sites and complete tasks on behalf of the user.[^cursor1][^msft4][^atlas1]
Productivity suites became the most visible battleground for AI in software. Microsoft, Google, and Apple each tied AI features to their flagship platforms, while collaboration startups such as Notion, Coda, and Slack added generative writing tools.
| Product | Vendor | AI features | Launch |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microsoft 365 Copilot | Microsoft | Draft and rewrite in Word, formula and chart help in Excel, deck generation in PowerPoint, email triage and reply in Outlook, meeting recap in Teams, business chat across Microsoft Graph | Announced March 16, 2023; GA November 1, 2023 |
| Gemini for Workspace | Help me write in Docs and Gmail, slide generation in Slides, summarization in Meet, formula help in Sheets, side panel chat | Duet AI announced August 29, 2023; rebranded Gemini February 21, 2024 | |
| Notion AI | Notion | Inline writing assistance, summarization, brainstorming, translation, autofill in databases, Q&A across workspace | February 22, 2023 |
| Coda AI | Coda | Workspace assistant integrated with 600+ SaaS apps, brief drafting, table autofill | October 4, 2023 with Coda 4.0 |
| Slack AI | Salesforce | Thread summaries, channel recaps, natural-language search, daily digests | February 14, 2024 |
| Microsoft Loop | Microsoft | AI suggestions for create, brainstorm, blueprint, describe inside collaborative pages | GA November 15, 2023 |
| Apple Intelligence | Apple | Writing tools across system apps, Smart Reply in Mail, summaries in Notifications, image cleanup in Photos, ChatGPT handoff from Siri | Announced June 10, 2024; phased rollout from October 28, 2024 |
Microsoft 365 Copilot is the most heavily marketed product in the category. Microsoft announced it on March 16, 2023, started a paid private preview with around 600 enterprises in June 2023, and brought it to general availability for enterprise customers on November 1, 2023 at $30 per user per month.[^msft1][^msft3] At launch, customers included Visa, BP, Honda, Pfizer, and Chevron, with major consulting partners such as Accenture, EY, KPMG, Kyndryl, and PwC adopting it for their own staff. Accenture publicly disclosed more than 740,000 seats, making it Microsoft's largest deployment.[^msft4] By 2026 quarterly reporting, Microsoft 365 Copilot reached over 20 million paid seats, with the number of customers with more than 50,000 seats quadrupling year over year.
Google's Workspace AI strategy went through several brand changes. Google announced Duet AI for Workspace on May 10, 2023 and made it generally available on August 29, 2023 at $30 per user per month for Workspace Enterprise customers. On February 21, 2024 Google folded Duet into Gemini for Workspace, retiring the Duet AI name and introducing new business and enterprise tiers.[^google1] Gemini side panels appeared inside Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet, with summarization, drafting, and chat over the user's content.
Notion AI shipped on February 22, 2023, with 20 free responses per workspace member and a $10 per member per month upgrade for unlimited use. The feature set centered on inline writing, summarization, translation, brainstorm prompts, and Q&A over a user's pages. Notion reported strong adoption across its existing customer base and progressively added agents and workflows in 2024 and 2025.[^notion1]
Coda took a different approach. Coda 4.0, launched on October 4, 2023, included Coda AI in every paid plan at no additional cost, rather than charging an add-on. Coda AI connects to more than 600 SaaS integrations including Salesforce, Slack, Figma, Miro, and Jira.[^coda1]
Slack AI arrived on February 14, 2024 across paid plans in English, Spanish, and Japanese. It introduced thread summaries, channel recaps, and search answers grounded in the user's accessible channels. Slack reported in early customer pilots that users saved an average of 97 minutes per week.[^slackai1] At Dreamforce 2024 and again in 2026, Slack expanded with agents and the ability to run third-party AI agents inside the Slack interface.
Apple Intelligence is the largest on-device push. Announced at WWDC on June 10, 2024, the system uses a mixture of on-device language models, larger models on Apple's Private Cloud Compute servers, and a ChatGPT handoff for queries Siri does not want to handle directly. Writing tools, summaries, image cleanup, and Genmoji shipped first on October 28, 2024 with iOS 18.1, iPadOS 18.1, and macOS 15.1 on iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, M-series iPads, and M-series Macs.[^apple1] The phased rollout ran into 2025 and 2026 as Apple expanded language support and added an enhanced Siri.
Microsoft Loop, while smaller in profile than 365 Copilot, made it to general availability on November 15, 2023 with Copilot baked into pages and tables. The Copilot in Loop interface offers Create, Brainstorm, Blueprint, and Describe buttons that generate draft content from a prompt.[^loop1]
The creative software market saw the most dramatic transformation. Adobe, Canva, ByteDance, and Blackmagic Design each retrofitted generative AI into long-running products that were previously powered by classical image-processing pipelines.
Adobe Firefly launched as a beta on March 21, 2023, focused initially on text-to-image and text effects, with a training set drawn from Adobe Stock, public-domain content, and openly licensed work. Beta users generated more than 100 million assets in the first six weeks, making it one of the fastest beta launches in Adobe's history.[^firefly1] On May 23, 2023, Adobe brought Firefly into Photoshop with Generative Fill, allowing users to add, remove, or extend image content with text prompts inside the existing Photoshop interface.[^firefly2] Generative Expand for outpainting reached general availability in September 2023.
The Firefly model line then expanded across the Creative Cloud. Firefly Video Model previewed in April 2024, and Premiere Pro received Generative Extend in beta on October 14, 2024 at Adobe MAX. Generative Extend can lengthen a clip with photorealistic video and matching audio at the head or tail, primarily to smooth transitions and pad B-roll. It reached general availability with 4K and vertical-video support in April 2025.[^extend1] Lightroom received Generative Remove, Photoshop added Generative Workspace and a Distraction Removal tool, and Illustrator added Generative Recolor and Text to Pattern.
Canva launched Magic Studio on October 4, 2023, as part of its tenth-anniversary celebration. Magic Studio combined ten interoperable products under one roof: Magic Design generates full designs from a prompt, Magic Switch converts designs across formats, Magic Media bundles text-to-image and text-to-video, Magic Write is the long-form copy assistant, Magic Grab separates subjects from a photo, and Magic Expand outpaints images. Canva blends in-house models with partners such as Google and OpenAI, and integrated Runway Gen-2 for early video generation. Time named Magic Studio one of the best inventions of 2024.[^canva1]
ByteDance's CapCut released a generative AI suite branded Magic Studio in 2023, with background removal, color correction, photo restoration, AI portrait generation, sky replacement, 4K upscaling, AI avatars, voice cloning, and auto-captioning with translation across 25 languages. CapCut for Business launched in October 2023 with AI ad scripts and AI-generated presenters aimed at small marketers.[^capcut1]
Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve uses the DaVinci Neural Engine for many of its AI features, exclusive to Resolve Studio. Magic Mask isolates people, vehicles, animals, and objects for selective grading. Voice Isolation and Dialogue Leveler, added through Resolve 18.1, suppress background noise and balance dialogue volume in the Fairlight audio page. Other features include facial-recognition bin sorting, Super Scale uprezzing to 4K and 8K, and optical-flow-based Speed Warp retiming. DaVinci Resolve 20 (2025) added a generative text-to-image module, scene cut detection, and AI-based audio classification.[^resolve1]
Audacity, a free open-source audio editor, added optional OpenVINO plugins from Intel in 2024 for noise suppression, music separation, transcription, and music generation, all running on-device. Descript built its product line around an AI editing model that lets users edit audio and video by editing the transcript. iZotope RX, the de facto post-production audio repair tool, added machine-learning models for dialogue isolation, music rebalance, and de-reverb.
Meeting software is one of the largest beneficiaries of speech recognition and summarization improvements.
| Product | Vendor | AI features | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Zoom AI Companion | Zoom | Meeting summary, in-meeting questions, smart recording, Team Chat compose, contact-center Smart Compose | Free with paid Zoom seats since September 2023 |
| Teams Copilot | Microsoft | Real-time meeting summary, intelligent recap, action items, who said what | Part of Microsoft 365 Copilot, expanded December 2023 |
| Google Meet AI | Take notes for me, translated captions, studio look | Tied to Gemini for Workspace, 2024 | |
| Otter.ai | Otter.ai | Live transcripts, OtterPilot meeting agent, action items, Meeting GenAI Q&A | Founded 2016; OtterPilot 2023; Meeting GenAI February 2024 |
| Fireflies.ai | Fireflies.ai | Meeting transcription, AskFred chat over transcripts, topic detection, CRM sync | Founded 2016; expanded with GPT-4 in 2023 |
| Read.ai | Read | Meeting performance scores, summary, sentiment, follow-ups | Launched in 2022, AI summaries in 2023 |
| Granola | Granola | Background notetaker without joining the meeting as a bot | Launched 2024, raised Series A in 2024 |
| Krisp | Krisp | Bidirectional noise cancellation, transcription, AI notetaker, accent localization | Founded 2017, AI notetaker added in 2023 |
Zoom AI Companion launched in September 2023 at no additional cost for paid Zoom user accounts. At launch it offered meeting summary, in-meeting questions, smart recording, and Team Chat compose. Zoom uses a federated approach that blends its own model with Meta Llama 2, OpenAI, and Anthropic models. By 2024 Zoom reported AI Companion was enabled on more than 4 million accounts, and the company rolled out a 2.0 release that added contact-center Smart Compose and a paid AI Companion Add-On with customization features.[^zoomai1]
Microsoft Teams Copilot is part of Microsoft 365 Copilot. The intelligent recap feature, integrated into Copilot in December 2023, summarizes Teams meetings, identifies who spoke and what they said, and proposes action items. Copilot in Teams meetings can answer questions in real time during a meeting and offer a catch-up summary when the user joins late.[^teams1]
Otter.ai, founded as AISense in 2016, became one of the early independent transcription leaders. The company partnered with Zoom in 2018 to transcribe meetings post-call, launched OtterPilot in February 2023 to automate meeting attendance and summary, and released Meeting GenAI in February 2024 to let users query meeting summaries across multiple platforms.[^otter1] Fireflies.ai, also founded in 2016, took a similar path with AskFred, a chat interface that lets users ask questions over transcripts, plus CRM and Slack integrations.
Granola took the opposite design decision. Rather than joining meetings as a participant bot, it records the user's local audio in the background and produces structured notes after the call. The product launched in 2024 and quickly became a favorite among founders and venture capitalists for its less intrusive design. Krisp, founded in 2017 in Yerevan, originally built bidirectional noise cancellation that runs locally between the microphone and the conferencing app. Krisp later layered on transcription, summaries, and accent localization, processing more than 1 billion minutes of voice audio per month by 2026.
Anthropic ran a Claude in Slack integration from 2023, which let users mention @Claude in any Slack workspace. Anthropic retired the dedicated Slack app in 2025 as Slack moved to its own agentic framework, but Claude remains available through Slack via third-party agents and through Salesforce's own Slack agent infrastructure.
The browser, until 2023 a quiet category, became a major front for AI features. Microsoft, Opera, Brave, Google, The Browser Company, and OpenAI all shipped AI integrations.
Microsoft Edge integrated Bing Chat in February 2023, with a sidebar that could summarize the open page or compose drafts. Microsoft attracted more than one million people to its waitlist within 48 hours of the announcement.[^edge1] In October 2023, Microsoft renamed Edge's Bing Chat function to Microsoft Copilot with Bing Chat, and on November 15, 2023, Bing Chat itself was rebranded as Microsoft Copilot. Edge eventually became one of the main delivery channels for Microsoft Copilot, with the sidebar baked into the browser by default.
Opera Aria launched on May 24, 2023 in more than 180 countries, integrated into Opera's desktop and mobile browsers. Aria builds on Opera's Composer infrastructure and connects to OpenAI GPT models, enriched with live web results. It is free to all users, with no signup required.[^opera1] By 2025, Opera had added higher rate limits, faster models, and on-device options.
Brave Leo released to all desktop users in November 2023 with version 1.60 of the Brave browser. Leo defaults to Meta's Llama 2 and offers a Premium tier at $15 per month with access to Anthropic's Claude Instant for faster and more capable answers. Brave proxies requests through anonymized servers so that user IP addresses are not linked to prompts.[^leo1]
Google integrated Gemini features into Chrome through 2024 and 2025, adding a help-me-write feature for form fields, tab organization, and theme generation. Chrome moved Gemini Nano on-device in late 2024 for select features.
Arc Search, from The Browser Company, launched on iOS on January 28, 2024. Its Browse for Me feature reads at least six related links and assembles a generated page with sections, photos, and summaries.[^arc1] Arc Search reached Android beta in October 2024 and Browse for Me also became available in Arc's desktop browser.
ChatGPT Atlas, OpenAI's first browser, launched on October 21, 2025 on macOS, with Windows, iOS, and Android versions promised soon after. Atlas is built on Chromium and ships with browser memories that let ChatGPT recall context from previously visited sites, plus an agent mode in preview for ChatGPT Plus, Pro, and Business users that can navigate the web, fill forms, and complete tasks for the user.[^atlas1]
On the operating-system side, two parallel rollouts dominate. Apple Intelligence is described above. Microsoft launched the Copilot+ PC category at Build on May 20, 2024. Copilot+ PCs are Windows 11 machines with at least 40 TOPS of NPU performance, designed to run small language models locally for features such as Cocreator in Paint, Live Captions with translation, Windows Studio Effects, and the controversial Recall.[^recall1] Android phones running Gemini Nano on-device, starting with the Pixel 8 Pro in late 2023, added Summarize in Recorder and Smart Reply in Gboard, plus on-device generative features in Google Messages.
Business intelligence and analytics software, traditionally a category that asked users to learn query languages and chart configuration, embraced natural-language interfaces almost universally.
Microsoft launched Copilot for Power BI in November 2023 in public preview, tied to Microsoft Fabric. Copilot in Microsoft Fabric reached general availability for the Power BI experience in May 2024 and was enabled by default for all tenants starting May 20, 2024. To use Copilot, customers need a paid Fabric capacity (F2 or higher) or Power BI Premium capacity (P1 or higher).[^pbi1] Microsoft added a mobile version, EU data-residency support, and stopped storing prompts for abuse monitoring.
Tableau Pulse, an AI feature that automatically surfaces and summarizes insights against a user's KPIs, became generally available on February 22, 2024. Tableau also released Einstein Copilot for Tableau in beta in February 2024 and brought it to general availability later that year, with features including recommended questions, automated analysis, and chart suggestions during data preparation and visualization.[^tableau1]
Google's Looker integrated with Gemini for analytics conversations, dashboard summaries, and chart suggestions. Hex Magic, from data-analysis platform Hex, added a natural-language SQL writer in 2023 and an autonomous Hex Agent in 2024. ThoughtSpot Sage layered natural-language search over an enterprise data model with GPT-4. Mode Analytics launched Mode AI in 2023 and a Helix engine in 2024 that handles complex data queries through a fine-tuned model on top of the user's warehouse.
Snowflake Cortex, Databricks Genie, Sigma AI, and Sisense Notebooks all followed similar patterns: a chat interface above the warehouse, plus generation of SQL, dashboards, or narratives. The Gartner Magic Quadrant for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms shifted heavily after 2023 to evaluate vendors on their AI-assisted capabilities, not just on their core visualization tools.
The customer-relationship management category became one of the more competitive AI battlegrounds. Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics, and a string of revenue-intelligence vendors all introduced AI agents in 2023 and 2024.
Salesforce Einstein, launched as predictive AI in 2016, was relaunched in September 2023 as Einstein 1 with a generative Einstein Copilot. The conversational AI assistant moved to public beta on February 27, 2024 and general availability on April 25, 2024. Einstein Copilot was rebranded to Agentforce at Dreamforce 2024 on September 12, 2024, with Marc Benioff publicly setting a target of one billion agents by the end of 2025.[^salesforce2][^salesforce3] Agentforce 2.0 and Agentforce 3 followed in the months after launch, expanding to service, sales, marketing, and commerce roles.
HubSpot Breeze launched at INBOUND on September 18, 2024, with three components: Breeze Copilot, a chat assistant for marketing, sales, and service teams; Breeze Agents (Content Agent, Social Media Agent, Prospecting Agent, Customer Agent); and Breeze Intelligence, which enriches contact records from a database of more than 200 million buyer and company profiles. HubSpot also released more than 80 individual AI features across the platform.[^breeze1]
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot launched in March 2023, predating Microsoft 365 Copilot, with features in Sales, Customer Service, Field Service, and Customer Insights. Sales Copilot integrated with Microsoft 365 Copilot for unified email and CRM workflows, and added more agents through 2024 and 2025.
Gong, founded in 2015 by Amit Bendov and Eilon Reshef, built one of the early conversation-intelligence platforms. Gong records and transcribes calls and meetings, analyzes them for objections and buying signals, and produces deal-risk scores. The product added a generative AI layer, Gong Assistant, in 2023 that summarizes calls, drafts follow-ups, and updates CRM fields.[^gong1] Outreach and Salesloft built similar AI summaries and prospecting agents on top of their sales-engagement platforms.
Marketo, part of Adobe, layered AI on top of marketing automation through Adobe Sensei GenAI. Jasper, founded in 2021 by David Rogenmoser, Chris Hull, and John Morgan, started as Jarvis and pivoted to a brand-driven content platform for marketing teams; the company raised $131 million by 2025 and reached around $88 million in annual revenue.[^jasper1] Copy.ai started life as a short-form copywriting tool and expanded into broader go-to-market automation with multi-step workflows.
Customer service was an obvious target for generative AI because helpdesks already had structured knowledge bases and ticket histories suitable for retrieval-augmented generation.
Intercom Fin launched in March 2023 as one of the first GPT-4-powered customer service bots. Fin ingests an existing knowledge base and resolves a meaningful share of customer queries autonomously, while citing source articles and passing complex queries to human agents when needed. Fin 2 followed in 2024 with workflow actions, and Fin 3 in 2025 introduced procedures, simulations, and multi-channel deployment including voice, Slack, and Discord.[^intercom1]
Zendesk launched Zendesk AI at its Relate conference on May 10, 2023, building on a partnership with OpenAI announced in April 2023. Advanced AI for Zendesk added bot personas, intent detection, content cues, and supervisor macros. In October 2023 Zendesk expanded with generative features for call transcription, summarization, and customer sentiment scoring.[^zendesk1]
Sierra, founded in early 2024 by Bret Taylor and Clay Bavor, raised $175 million at a $4.5 billion valuation in October 2024 and reached $100 million in annualized revenue in under two years. Sierra builds AI customer service agents for companies including SoFi, Ramp, and Brex.[^sierra1] Ada, an older Toronto-based conversational AI vendor founded in 2016, repositioned around generative AI and an autonomous AI agent in 2024 and 2025.
Salesforce Service Cloud became one of the early adopters of Einstein Copilot and later Agentforce for service, with autonomous agents that handle entire ticket flows. Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service Copilot competes in the same category. Forethought, Cresta, and Decagon round out a crowded mid-market.
Cybersecurity vendors raced to add language-model assistants on top of detection and response platforms, both to lower the entry skill bar for security operations center analysts and to make complex queries possible in natural language.
Microsoft Security Copilot was announced in March 2023, entered an Early Access Program in October 2023, and became generally available on April 1, 2024. Microsoft Copilot for Security is sold as a consumption offering billed by the hour, with each Security Compute Unit at $4 per hour. In a Microsoft-funded study, experienced security analysts using Copilot were 22 percent faster and 7 percent more accurate at common tasks.[^secco1]
CrowdStrike Charlotte AI launched on May 30, 2023 at the company's Fal.Con event, with a goal of letting any user of the Falcon platform ask natural-language questions and receive intuitive answers. Charlotte AI benefits from a continuous feedback loop powered by CrowdStrike OverWatch managed threat hunters and CrowdStrike Intelligence. Subsequent releases of Charlotte AI added agentic capabilities for triage, hunting, and remediation, and CrowdStrike launched the Charlotte AI AgentWorks ecosystem for partner-built agents.[^charlotte1]
SentinelOne Purple AI was introduced in 2023 and reached general availability on April 9, 2024 as a security analyst that synthesizes evidence across SentinelOne's stack and produces explainable verdicts. Purple AI supports the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework for natural-language queries. Early adopters reported running threat hunts 80 percent faster, and Purple AI won the 2024 CyberScoop 50 Innovation of the Year award.[^purple1] At OneCon 2024, SentinelOne added Auto-Alert Triage, Global Alert Analysis, and shared investigation notebooks.
Darktrace, founded in 2013, used machine learning for network anomaly detection long before generative AI, and added a generative summarization layer through Darktrace Cyber AI Analyst. Vectra AI built similar detection products around behavioral analytics. Snyk added DeepCode AI to its developer-security platform for vulnerability detection and autofix. GitHub Advanced Security, part of GitHub Enterprise, added Copilot Autofix in 2024 to propose code fixes for detected vulnerabilities. Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, and Trend Micro all rolled out their own AI copilots through 2024 and 2025.
Developer tools are covered in detail on Software Development, App Development, and Web Development. The headline products are:
Between them, these tools have changed the day-to-day shape of software development for the majority of professional programmers, and the developer tools category remains the most concentrated and fastest-growing segment of the AI software market.
Not every rollout went smoothly. Two episodes in 2024 illustrate the privacy and pricing tensions that came with the rapid rollout of AI features.
Microsoft Recall. Recall was one of the headline features of the Copilot+ PC category announced at Microsoft Build on May 20, 2024. Recall takes a screenshot of the user's desktop every few seconds and indexes them with an on-device language model so that the user can ask questions about anything they have seen on their PC. Security researcher Kevin Beaumont published an analysis showing that early Recall builds stored snapshots and OCR text in unencrypted plaintext SQLite files, which any process running under the user account could read.[^recall1] The original opt-out design was widely criticized for risking corporate, financial, and personal data leakage. In June 2024, Microsoft delayed Recall, made it opt-in, added required Windows Hello authentication, and pulled it from the initial Copilot+ PC launch. Recall returned in Windows Insider preview in December 2024 and gradually rolled out to general availability through 2025.
Adobe terms of service. In June 2024, Adobe pushed an updated Terms of Use that Creative Cloud users had to accept to keep using their applications. One clause read that Adobe "may access your content through both automated and manual methods, such as for content review." A tweet highlighting the clause attracted more than 5 million views, and creators feared Adobe would train generative models on private client work.[^adobetos1] Adobe published clarifications and on June 24, 2024 released revised Terms of Service stating that users own their content, and that Adobe does not use customer content to train generative AI, with the exception of work submitted to Adobe Stock. The episode highlighted how thin the trust margin is between professional creators and the platforms they pay for.
Microsoft 365 Copilot pricing. Microsoft's $30 per user per month price tag for Microsoft 365 Copilot attracted criticism in 2023 and 2024 as IT buyers tried to weigh the productivity benefit against a roughly 50 percent increase on top of an E3 or E5 license. Some analysts argued that initial pilot results were below expectations. Microsoft eventually removed the 300-seat minimum, expanded availability through 2024, and reported 70 percent of the Fortune 500 had at least started a Copilot deployment by FY25 Q1. The market repriced as competition from Google Gemini for Workspace and Slack AI pushed Microsoft to offer more flexible bundles.[^msft4]