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Microsoft is committed to responsibly designing, building, and releasing AI technologies-keeping humans at the center and guided by our principles. Here are some responses to frequently asked questions about People Skills, the data it uses and AI inferencing.
People Skills: Responsible AI FAQ for admins
What is People Skills?
People Skills is an AI-driven service that generates personalized skill profiles for your users mapped to a customizable, built-in taxonomy. This service provides a data layer that enhances Microsoft 365 Copilot and multiple M365 Copilot Agents, Microsoft 365, and Viva services with contextualized data and skills-driven experiences.
People Skills:
Equips leaders with critical workforce skill insights to prepare and accelerate their AI transformation.
Employees employers with personalized skill profiles and experiences to help them connect with others and discover opportunities. Depending on a user’s Microsoft 365 license, eligible users may have an AI-inferred skills profile, while all users can search and choose from skills from your organization’s skills taxonomy.
For more information, see Overview of People Skills and how skills AI inferencing works.
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 eligible licensed individuals based on role and work activity. Specifically:
People Skills uses AI to automatically generate a personalized skill profile for users to make it easy to share their skills with others. Users can edit and confirm these skills, add others, and decide how they are shared. Users 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.
Note
People Skills is not designed for behavioral monitoring, performance management, or employment decisions. It infers only predefined, work-related skills from an admin-approved taxonomy. Microsoft does not take data from one context and use it for another purpose, in line with our data protection commitments under the Product Terms and the Microsoft Online Services Data Protection Addendum. All inference is processed entirely within the customer's Microsoft 365 tenant boundary.
How is People Skills quality evaluated? What metrics are used to measure performance?
Microsoft measures confirmation and rejection rates of skills suggested to People Skills users to help improve AI-generated skills quality. These metrics have been and will continue to be used to measure and improve system performance. Microsoft does not store the skills data or the underlying data used to infer skills.
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 a user’s Microsoft 365 profile and work activity in Microsoft 365. These signals may not be a comprehensive reflection of a user’s skills or abilities. Learn more about how AI infers 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?
Admins are responsible for understanding their organization's local legal and business requirements — including applicable data protection obligations and Works Council guidelines — and for using the available controls to configure People Skills in a manner consistent with those requirements and their business practices. Microsoft provides these controls so that organizations can self-manage inferencing, skills sharing, and opt-in defaults by tenant, group, or individual user. Learn about our access controls
Administrator controls available
Administrators can disable all People Skills experiences, or only AI inferencing and skill sharing for the entire tenant, or for specific users or user groups. They can also set default values for end user opt in/ opt-out for skill sharing and use of AI. Manage Privacy and Sharing controls in People Skills | Microsoft Learn
Administrators can also tag skills in their taxonomy (skill library) as sensitive to prevent them from being used by AI inferencing. Potentially sensitive skills in the built-in skills taxonomy are automatically labeled as sensitive skills and blocked from AI inferencing. Manage AI-restricted skills | Microsoft Learn
Some reports such as skills landscape reports in Viva Insights or skill insights about teams in Workforce Insights Agent are available only to authorized users. AI generated data on aggregate skills is always labeled as such.
User data privacy controls
Review the data privacy controls we offer for admins to control default AI inferencing and skill visibility settings for their tenant or groups of users.
Users can also opt out of AI inferencing or skill sharing on their profile. For more information, see Manage AI and sharing options.
What is my People Skills Data Location?
You can find the actual location of your data in Microsoft 365 Admin Center. As a tenant administrator, you can find the actual data location for committed data by navigating to Admin > Settings > Org Settings > Organization Profile > Data Location.