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ChatGPT made generative AI a household term with its launch in November 2022. The ready availability meant many people got to experience first-hand what the tools could do (or in some cases, try to do) to support everyday tasks. At the time, the focus was very much on individual productivity. But its rapid evolution means it's now starting to be used as an equal collaborator in the workplace.
The shift marks a significant transformation in how teams operate, blending human creativity and intuition with the analytical power of AI. From enhancing decision-making processes to streamlining workflows, AI is reshaping collaboration across industries.
How Miro Views AI and Team Collaboration
AI enhances teamwork by effectively synthesizing unstructured work and transforming it into structured work, significantly accelerating teams’ daily tasks, said Miro’s chief product and technology officer, Jeff Chow. He pointed to brainstorming to illustrate. When teams brainstorm, they often wind up in "groupthink," he said. AI can offer a fresh perspective in these situations.
Miro’s AI Sidekicks, for instance, are designed to complement a team’s thinking with domain expertise. The company's Innovation Workspace currently features three personas: the Product Leader, the Agile Coach and the Product Marketer. The Product Leader persona can analyze presentation content and provide feedback and suggestions, while the Product Marketer might offer insights on a product launch strategy, adding extra validation to the team’s existing work.
Chow also highlights that asynchronous collaboration is a powerful way to reduce meetings, but transitioning back to synchronous collaboration can be challenging and noisy. AI helps by summarizing information to reduce noise and highlight priority areas. Miro introduced “Catch up” as a personal “tl;dr” feature, providing summaries to help users identify recent collaborations and areas requiring immediate attention.
However, while the future of collaboration with AI looks promising, current challenges remain. Regarding team engagement, Chow notes that modalities like chat interfaces are “wonderful” but represent a new user experience requiring behavioral change. “You need to be experienced with prompt engineering — or at least willing to adapt your workflow — to engage effectively,” he explained.
“We believe integrating AI into critical work processes is key to encouraging more teams to engage deeply with AI. At Miro, we introduced ‘AI action shortcuts’ so that when one team member creates a prompt and a connected workflow, their colleagues can access all the AI benefits with a single click.”
AI often overpromises outcomes, Chow continued, leading people to expect it to eliminate human involvement entirely in certain process steps. He sees AI as an accelerator to speed up ideation, emphasizing that humans still need to ideate. “The most profound work,” he asserted, “occurs during ideation and iteration.”
AI truly shines in teamwork when considering the innovation process. Chow breaks this process into three distinct phases: discovery (brainstorming and ideation), definition (synthesis and decision-making) and delivery (execution). These phases involve numerous twists, turns and iterations. AI can play a crucial role in accelerating these phases.
However, Chow also points out that productivity gain isn’t just about speed; it’s about helping teams focus more on the work itself rather than the process of work, such as tracking tasks and discussing work. This, in turn, allows teams to dedicate more time to being creative and inventive instead of merely performing repetitive tasks.
He concedes that the use of AI in teamwork does add further complexity to questions around security, noting it's an issue under normal circumstances but that AI heightens the need to take steps.
"New information retrieval behaviors are showing that the previous 'security by obscurity' approaches are no longer enough and we have to be even more conscious of how information is shared. It’s critical the IT admins are able to control the permissions of sensitive content across their tools and applications," said Chow, pointing to Miro's Enterprise Guard as a step in that direction.
Related Article: Generative AI, the Great Productivity Booster?
Microsoft's Take on Team-AI Collaboration: Copilot Pages
Copilot Pages is another major AI-driven team collaboration tool currently on offer. Released in September, Copilot Pages is part of Microsoft's broader suite of Copilot features that integrate AI capabilities into various applications, including Microsoft 365.
Copilot Pages aims to change the way teams collaborate by providing a seamless, intuitive platform that brings in AI as a co-worker to improve communication and productivity. Teamwork in Pages also happens within a blank canvas, where team members can pull in source material, documents and tag in new collaborators.
One of its standout features is its ability to streamline workflows. By integrating AI-driven insights and suggestions directly into the collaborative process, teams can focus on content and strategy rather than getting bogged down in formatting or organizational issues. Team members can easily collaborate on projects, share feedback and track changes, ensuring that everyone is aligned and informed throughout the process, while AI takes care of managing deadlines, assigning responsibility for tasks and acts as an on-call researcher.
Any content the Copilot creates in Pages is persistent, meaning team members can return to reference points at later times. Copilot Pages also allows for multiple members of a team to prompt the AI, which could help refine results.
Copilot Pages operates on top of the existing Loop collaborative framework. In terms of security and access questions with Copilot Pages, the system defaults to the higher priority security level. Further security moves are on the roadmap, with items like file-level retention labels; programmatic API access to the containers holding Pages assets to allow for integration of governance, management and compliance tools; and guest access via Entra B2B for tenants with sensitive content expected in the fourth quarter.
Related Article: The Double Sided Coin of Using Generative AI for Cybersecurity
Evolving Teams
The effectiveness of any of these AI-driven team collaboration tools comes down to four things: identity, decisions, exchanges and atmosphere (IDEA) Info-Tech Research Group research director Brittany Lutes told Reworked. She broke down how AI impacts each of these elements. “The identity of an IT team based on their purpose and strategic objectives is in a constant state of change as they integrate with emerging technologies like AI.”
- Identity —The capabilities and, consequently, the skills required to deliver against these objectives will change, requiring team members to explore how their daily role responsibilities contribute to a new identity in this era.
- Decision-Making — Decision-making holds great potential as predictive AI advances, offering insights to make informed decisions at appropriate levels of authority in IT. This enables individual contributors or teams to gain the insights needed to act more quickly.
- Exchanges — AI also impacts exchanges. “If there’s anywhere AI is negatively impacting team effectiveness, it’s with exchanges,” Lutes noted. The knowledge we gain from peers and the reasons for interaction may decrease if we believe that large language models can provide comparable insight and thoroughness on a given topic as our colleagues. “It’s important that human interactions continue,” she said. “AI has advanced greatly, but the human perspective and ability to pick up on underlying tones or expectations cannot be replaced yet.”
- Atmosphere — Atmosphere examines team culture and psychological safety. Lutes said AI is most effective in teams where leadership actively highlights how they use AI and encourages their teams to do the same. “It’s only when we’re given the space to explore and try these technologies that employees will a) try to integrate AI into their daily work practices and b) share when things do or don’t work with peers.”
Lutes predicts that AI’s role in the workplace over the next five years will be to reduce the time and effort people spend on tasks, allowing more time to be spent on creative work that AI cannot handle.
“Our IT Talent Trends for 2025 show that the next generation entering the workforce is eager to use AI for these reasons, but it’s the older generations holding leadership positions and struggling to let go of previous ways of working,” she explains. “My biggest fear for the future of work and AI is that everyone has different expectations for a good work environment. Until we see that shift, there will undoubtedly be workplace tensions around AI.”
Related Article: Don't Leave Teamwork to Chance: Why Collaboration Design Matters
AI as a Collaborative Partner
As AI technology continues to evolve, its role in enhancing team collaboration becomes increasingly evident, said Erik Severinghaus, founder and CEO of Bloomfilter. “AI’s ability to automate data-intensive tasks and provide real-time insights allows team members to focus on strategy and creativity, making collaboration more impactful,” he told Reworked.
AI excels at analyzing vast datasets to identify patterns and highlight actionable insights, empowering teams to move beyond repetitive tasks. Tools like Copilot Pages enhance this capability by offering real-time analytics, allowing team members to make informed decisions quickly. “When AI provides insights in real-time, teams don’t just work faster — they work more cohesively, aligned around the same data and objectives,” Severinghaus added.
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AI also supports team organization and communication by automating tasks such as scheduling and summarizing meeting notes. However, AI's limitations include a lack of emotional intelligence, which means it cannot fully grasp the nuances of human interactions. “AI can’t replace the empathy and intuition that are essential for strong teamwork,” Severinghaus said.
Looking ahead, Severinghaus envisions AI as a natural collaborator that adapts to team needs and enhances personalized interactions. “AI will increasingly respond in ways that feel natural, like a knowledgeable colleague,” he said. While AI can spark creativity and provide fresh perspectives, over-reliance on it can stifle critical thinking — a finding Avanade recently confirmed. “We want AI to support, not stifle, human curiosity,” he emphasized.
As a final thought, Miro’s Chow predicted that AI will empower workers to leverage their knowledge for a better flow of work within the next five years. AI will shift organizational practices to be more adaptive and creative, and the craft of collaboration will become more important than the craft of specialized tasks. This shift includes identifying the unique chemistry of teams and various vectors of behavior. He sees AI helping to form high-functioning teams, so they can leverage their collaborative IQ to complement each other effectively.