AI is redefining research, content maintenance, and the global learner experience at Microsoft Global Skilling
Microsoft Global Skilling helps people and organizations build the skills they need to thrive in an AI‑powered world. Within Global Skilling, the Learning Lab is the innovation engine—a team focused on designing, testing, and evolving modern learning experiences to continuously improve how skills are developed, validated, and applied in the flow of work.
AI is reshaping how organizations work. Teams aren’t just adopting new tools—they’re also figuring out how those tools fit into existing workflows, roles, and expectations, all while trying to keep pace with business demands in a rapidly changing landscape. It’s a heavy lift. As the leader of the Learning Lab team, I’m navigating these same pressures, along with my team members, as we balance day-to-day delivery with the need to evolve our processes in real time. That’s why we’re embedding AI assistants and agentic workflows into internal processes—using them not only to work differently but also to learn differently. Through experimentation, we’re uncovering new ways to streamline operations and improve the learner experience for our global audience.
This blog highlights three of our team’s most impactful AI initiatives that could also benefit your organization. Inspired by these projects, we developed A Practical Guide for Bringing AI into Your Business Processes, featuring real-world examples and actionable ideas for integrating AI and human expertise across your organization.
3 impactful AI initiatives leading the way
1. Reducing time-intensive coordination to optimize research
The challenge of coordinating teams for research
Before any learning materials can be built, our team conducts extensive research to understand new technologies, identify required skills, and validate what learners need. This early-stage analysis requires input from multiple stakeholders and a deep review of internal documentation, product roadmaps, and existing training materials.
How AI is helping accelerate our research tasks and optimize cross-team input
One of the biggest bottlenecks for our research workflows has been the time it takes to synthesize information and align teams around what a course should achieve. To improve this, we began experimenting with Researcher in Microsoft 365 Copilot and persona-based agents to support our research and planning stages. Our new process looks like this:
- Researcher synthesizes internal documentation, product roadmaps, and existing training materials to surface emerging themes and identify knowledge gaps. With the ability to process thousands of pages in minutes, it flags potential course objectives the team might have missed.
- In parallel, persona-based agents simulate the perspectives of stakeholders from varying teams to help validate ideas before bringing them to the key decision-makers.
- Throughout this process, our team members guide these AI tools through every step—providing the business context, analyzing AI outputs to identify gaps or inconsistencies, refining direction, and ensuring consideration of broader business objectives.
In our experience with AI handling synthesis and early-stage validation, we’ve reduced the time required for core research processes from two weeks to just one day. This significant time savings extends to every course developed with this method, enabling us to redirect focus toward shaping stronger strategies, aligning content with business impact, and accelerating decision-making across teams.
Applying this approach in your organization
AI-supported research and planning can help you make sense of complex information faster and build alignment earlier in your decision cycles. By using AI to synthesize documents, surface patterns, and validate assumptions, you can reduce the effort required to get teams on the same page. Your team members can then focus on refining strategy, confirming business priorities, and shaping higher-impact decisions. This combination improves speed and clarity throughout cross-functional work.
Explore A Practical Guide for Bringing AI into Your Business Processes to learn more about how you can apply this in processes like:
- Drafting onboarding plans that human resources (HR) leaders can tailor to company culture.
- Developing quarterly sales plays informed by shifting buyer behavior and competitor activity.
- Creating campaign briefs rooted in audience insights, market trends, and performance data.
- Developing forecasting assumptions by synthesizing inputs from sales, operations, and historical data.
2. Transitioning from manual maintenance to continuous quality improvements
The challenge of shorter content lifecycles
We maintain thousands of courses and lab environments as part of our skilling initiatives for Microsoft technologies. With the fast pace of product evolution, it can be challenging to keep learning content accurate and functional.
How GitHub Copilot became the maintenance partner for the team
We recognized that the demands for maintaining learning content were increasing beyond our capacity to manage effectively. So we integrated GitHub Copilot into the content maintenance workflow like this:
- GitHub Copilot tools analyze content repositories—flagging inconsistencies, identifying outdated examples, and recommending updates based on current documentation.
- Throughout this process, our team reviews and refines the AI-generated recommendations. When GitHub Copilot flags an issue, we evaluate how those changes might apply to other training courses. We also ensure that all revisions align with learning objectives and verify that security and accessibility standards are met.
- Then GitHub Copilot helps implement some of the suggested updates, like generating new code samples or suggesting environmental configurations that align with the latest product releases.
As a result, our team has reduced the time we spend on routine content maintenance by up to 25%. And with these time savings, team members can shift from reactive updates to proactive innovation—evaluating emerging skills, shaping next-generation modules, and exploring how agents, simulations, and personalized learning could improve outcomes.
Applying this approach in your organization
AI-assisted maintenance can help you keep large, fast-changing content ecosystems accurate and up to date without overwhelming your teams. By using AI to surface inconsistencies, flag outdated material, and recommend updates, you can dramatically reduce time spent on routine fixes. Your experts can then focus on reviewing changes for accuracy, regulatory needs, and strategic intent. This balance enables you to maintain quality at scale while freeing your teams to invest in higher-value innovation.
Explore A Practical Guide for Bringing AI into Your Business Processes to learn more about how you can apply this in processes like:
- Maintaining and updating sales enablement content as product and service offerings evolve.
- Keeping product messaging frameworks and campaign assets consistent and up to date.
- Updating help center articles and support workflows after feature releases.
- Updating contract templates and clause libraries to align with new regulatory guidance.
3. Delivering inclusive learning at scale through diverse content formats
The challenge of content relevance and engagement
Our learners span every continent, speak dozens of languages, and have their own preferred learning methods. Creating multimodal, accessible, and inclusive learning experiences while managing constant content updates was stretching the team thin.
How AI helps scale and translate content for global learners
To support different learning styles and languages, we’re piloting how to create immersive, inclusive learning through two experiments with AI:
- We’re using AI tools to turn a single source of training content, like a session transcript or recording, into multiple formats, such as videos, podcasts, and recap summaries. This multimodal output lets us update learning materials at the pace required by our global audience and helps ensure that we’re reaching learners in their preferred formats.
- We’re piloting an AI-powered tool that not only translates content but also generates avatars that deliver multilingual voiceovers with more natural lip-sync, eliminating one of the most distracting elements of dubbed content.
Early results show that we can now recover up to 15 hours per course we develop—time our team can spend on more nuanced work that AI can’t do, like adapting cultural references, verifying that tone and pacing match learning objectives, and maintaining brand voice.
Applying this approach in your organization
AI-powered localization can help you deliver content that feels native to every audience you service, no matter the language or market. By pairing AI’s speed in translation, voiceover, and prompt generation with your team’s expertise in cultural nuance and brand standards, you can scale global engagement without diluting quality. This combination lets you reach more learners, customers, and employees while keeping your message consistent and relevant across regions.
Explore A Practical Guide for Bringing AI into Your Business Processes to learn more about how you can apply this in processes like:
- Localizing campaign assets for regional markets across languages and cultural norms.
- Tailoring pitch decks and demos for industry-specific or region-specific buyers.
- Creating multilingual chatbot responses and support scripts for global customers.
- Adapting standard operating procedure and process documentation for different facilities or regional regulations.
Building skills and strengthening our AI strategy
As AI becomes an extension to the Learning Lab, we’ve discovered that it’s much more than just implementing new tools—it’s also a journey of building technical and human skills across the team. Our experiments require every team member to stretch into new capabilities, from process optimization and innovation to strengthening collaboration and creative problem-solving. As a result, we’ve been able to spend less time on repetitive tasks and to dedicate more energy to the kind of creative, relationship-driven work that leads to exceptional learning experiences.
Looking to build skills for you and your teams? Explore AI Skills Navigator, the agentic learning space that brings together AI-powered skilling experiences and credentials that help individuals build career skills and organizations worldwide accelerate their business.
