What caught our attention was how much of it was about working together. AI has been a strangely solitary experience so far - you, a chatbot and an empty box. OpenAI seems increasingly interested in what happens when the work itself lives there too: shared spaces, documents people and AI can work on together, tasks that keep moving, and Sites that can turn that work into something other people can actually visit.

And then there was the thing OpenAI didn't launch. GPT-6.1 Astra was held back after testing found it sometimes carried on without permission. For all the shiny new stuff at DevDay, that might be the most reassuring takeaway: sometimes the right launch decision is not to launch.

Some had to bring in outside help. Others missed projects or lost work altogether. And while almost all have now invested in AI tools for at least some of their people, fewer than half think most of their workforce actually knows how to use them.

There's no shortage of businesses buying new technology. Making sure their people know what to do with it might be the better investment.

It was essentially design software for people who weren't designers. Pick a template, follow a wizard, drag a few boxes around and, eventually, something vaguely printable emerged. Microsoft now points people towards Word and PowerPoint for some of that work - or Microsoft Designer, where AI can increasingly do the designing for you.

There's something rather lovely about that changing of the guard. Publisher taught a generation to make it themselves. The next generation of tools would rather you just told them what you wanted.