New Delhi, Oct 31 (IANS): Industrial manufacturing major Siemens and tech giant Microsoft on Tuesday joined hands to bring the benefits of generative AI to industries worldwide.

Working together, the companies are introducing Siemens Industrial Copilot, an AI-powered jointly developed assistant aimed at improving human-machine collaboration in manufacturing.

"We’re building on our longstanding collaboration with Siemens and bringing together AI advances across the Microsoft Cloud with Siemens’ industrial domain expertise to empower both frontline and knowledge workers with new, AI-powered tools, starting with Siemens Industrial Copilot," Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO, Microsoft, said in a statement.

Siemens Industrial Copilot will allow users to rapidly generate, optimise and debug complex automation code, and significantly shorten simulation times, reducing a task that previously took weeks to minutes.

"This has the potential to revolutionise 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 labour shortages," said Roland Busch, CEO of Siemens AG.

Moreover, the companies foresee AI copilots assisting professionals in various industries, including manufacturing, infrastructure, transportation, and healthcare. Numerous copilots are already planned in the manufacturing sectors, such as automotive, consumer package goods and machine building.

Leading automotive supplier, Schaeffler AG, is an early adopter of Siemens Industrial Copilot, the company said.

In addition, the company mentioned that the Siemens Teamcenter app for Microsoft Teams will be generally available in December 2023 and accelerate innovation across the product lifecycle.

This new app uses the latest advances in generative AI to connect functions across the product design and manufacturing lifecycle, such as frontline workers to engineering teams.