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Most meetings could probably be replaced with emails. At the very least, many of them could be significantly shorter. However, Microsoft appears to be moving in the opposite direction with its new AI feature for Microsoft Teams, which suggests follow-up questions to "keep the conversation flowing."
Microsoft’s Copilot Will Suggest Follow-Up Questions in Teams Meetings
Similar to Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot is described as an "everyday AI companion" designed to streamline tasks, allowing you to focus on more meaningful work rather than mundane tasks, as noted by Microsoft Support. Although improving efficiency is the goal, Microsoft’s latest update for Teams — its virtual meeting platform for both Windows and Mac — may unintentionally lead to longer meetings.
As revealed in the Microsoft 365 Roadmap, the upcoming Copilot sidebar will automatically propose follow-up questions during a Teams meeting:
"When Copilot in Teams Meetings responds to a prompt, it will also suggest follow-ups to keep the conversation going. These questions will typically be based on its previous response and might focus on specific topics, request more details, or inquire about points made by other participants during the meeting."
Microsoft Support further explains that the Suggest Follow-Up Questions feature is already available as a Copilot prompt in Teams. However, this AI assistant will soon generate follow-up questions automatically after any given response. For instance, if you ask Copilot to elaborate on a team member’s opinion or outline action items, it will not only reply to your question but also offer insightful follow-up queries.
Note:
The Copilot update is still under development and is expected to launch in March 2025.
The Role of AI in Meetings
If having virtual assistants interrupt your meetings sounds familiar, it’s because Microsoft Teams isn’t the only platform promoting its AI-powered sidebar. Zoom introduced its AI Companion 2.0 in October 2024, providing in-meeting tools to enhance your understanding of the discussion. Like Zoom’s companion, Microsoft’s Copilot offers transcriptions of meetings and can help catch you up if you join late.
In an ideal world, AI meeting tools would enhance your participation and help clarify follow-up actions. At their best, they ensure that meetings are productive and not just time wasters. However, they could also promote multitasking. If your AI companion is generating follow-up questions, it could lead to a scenario where you’re not fully engaged and miss synthesizing the information yourself.
These tools might unintentionally foster a sense of disengagement. We could find ourselves back where we started: questioning whether a meeting was truly necessary or if it could have been handled via email. With the existence of meeting transcriptions, the distinction between a meeting and an email is becoming increasingly blurry.
That said, not all meetings share the same importance. Hopefully, Microsoft’s latest Copilot update will add real value to meetings. If a follow-up question prompts team members to seek out the clarity they genuinely need from one another, then perhaps that makes a meeting worthwhile after all.
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