AI transparency in People Skills

What is People Skills? 

People Skills is a service in Microsoft 365 experiences and Microsoft 365 Copilot that helps generate personalized skill profiles for all users to help you connect with others, discover learning opportunities and develop your skills.

Depending on your Microsoft 365 license (if you have Microsoft 365 Copilot, for example), you may have an AI-inferred skills profile which you can review and manage. Your organization also provides a list of business skills (skills library) you can search and choose from to curate your skills profile. Learn more about People Skills and learn more about AI inferencing works  

This service also provides leaders in your organization with insights about employee skills.  

What can People Skills do? What are its intended uses? 

People Skills uses data from the Microsoft 365 Graph and information from Microsoft 365 profiles to generate AI-based skill profiles for individuals based on role and work activity.  Specifically:

• For eligible licensed users, People Skills uses AI to automatically generate a personalized skill profile for you to make it easy to share your skills with others. You can edit and confirm these skills, add others, and decide how they are shared. You can also use skills to find and connect with others through experiences like the Microsoft 365 profile card, Microsoft 365 Copilot, People Companion, and Org Explorer. Learn more about AI inferencing works

• HR Analysts can view aggregate skills data (skills generated by AI and those confirmed by users) to integrate into their organization’s skills landscape.

• Group Managers and leaders can view aggregate and individual skills data for their teams (skills generated by AI and those confirmed by users) to gain insights about their teams and integrate into their organization’s skills landscape.

• Knowledge Administrators and Global Administrators can set organization-wide skill availability and map skills to roles by selecting from a pre-defined list of skills or uploading their company skill library and role-to-skill mapping files.

People Skills is not designed for behavioral monitoring, performance management, or employment decisions such as promotion or compensation. Your administrators are responsible for deciding how skills data is used within your organization.

What are the limitations of People Skills? How can users minimize the impact of People Skills limitations when using the system? 

Skills generated by AI depend on the signals available to Microsoft, such as your Microsoft 365 profile and your work activity in Microsoft 365. These signals may not be a comprehensive reflection of your skills or abilities. Learn more about how AI infers your skills.

People Skills generates skills inferences that are restricted to an organization's skills library. This is the set of skills that all employees in your organization can choose from to create your skills profile. This limitation can impact the quality of skill inferences provided to users.

Even within the signals available to Microsoft, AI models may contain errors or inaccuracies based on a misinterpretation of the user's role or activity. We aim for the system to be accurate in aggregate.

AI-based answers related to skills may not always be accurate since they use a large language model and may have inaccuracies due to the underlying model performance. Users of the data should treat People Skills insights as one source of information and apply their judgment when using the data generated.

What operational factors and settings allow for effective and responsible use of People Skills?