Bill Gates' Pet Project, Work Assistant, Demoed in Video

Since Bill Gates returned to Microsoft as part of Satya Nadella's coronation, many have wondered what he's been working on. Bill was brought back to work on "special projects." I talked about it recently in Short Takes a couple weeks back to give some clarity on Bill's special role. Since then some additional information has taken shape.

Supersite's good friend, Mary Jo Foley, did a little digging on Friday within her secret society to try and get some solid evidence that a) Bill is busy, b) Bill is indeed working on something, and c) the rumored project is indeed a personal assistant for Microsoft Office. Mary Jo found that Bill Gates special project is possibly working on a new app called Work Assistant. Work Assistant is basically Cortana for Office 365.

Several leaked screenshots for Work Assistant have been revealed over the past few days, but over the weekend, a video demo has surfaced, thanks to msftplace.com.

So…is this really Bill Gates' project? It's still too early to say for sure. It's obviously early days, as the demo shows pretty limited functionality, and in my opinion, only shows pieces we sort of expected would come anyway.