Microsoft is bringing humans and machines closer together with its new industrial AI

Microsoft has been busy over recent months getting generative AI into the hands of office and corporate workers globally, but a new partnership with Siemens will see it deliver AI to industrial customers in the latest technological push.

Together, the two companies announced Siemens Industrial Copilot, a jointly developed AI assistant that’s meant to make human-machine collaboration more efficient.

Broadly, it will generate, optimize, and debug complex automation code in an effort to shorten simulation times and help companies produce results more quickly.

New Microsoft-backed Copilot will target industrial clients

Naturally, the Siemens Industrial Copilot will use Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service, thus it will have access to the same technologies that underpin the incredibly popular ChatGPT.

The companies stress that customers will remain in control of their data, which will not go on to be used in AI model training, which can be the case with some consumer data.

Microsoft hopes that the Siemens-branded AI tool will find a home across a variety of industries, including manufacturing, infrastructure, transportation, and healthcare.

Automotive supplier Schaeffler AG has already adopted generative AI in its engineering phase, to help engineering teams produce better code for its robots. CEO Klaus Rosenfeld said: “With this joint pilot, we’re stepping into a new age of productivity and innovation.”

Roland Busch, CEO of Siemens AG, added: “This has the potential to revolutionize the way companies design, develop, manufacture, and operate. Making human-machine collaboration more widely available allows engineers to accelerate code development, increase innovation and tackle skilled labor shortages.”

Siemens promises to share more details on Siemens Industrial Copilot at the SPS expo in Nuremberg, Germany, later this month.