Microsoft Digital, the company’s IT organization, believes AI can build community. In the Microsoft Asia region, employees used AI tools to create a collaborative digital comic book featuring regional leaders traveling across Asia in a hot air balloon, visiting teams in different countries and learning about local cultures. The comic book, the brainchild of Petra Glattbach, a senior business program manager based in Australia, grew out of an effort to rebuild personal connections across a region spanning Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, Singapore, and India. “To bring us together, we definitely got creative after COVID, and even more so when AI came in,” Glattbach says. “We did a lot of fun team games where we would share and represent our region.” For many years before the COVID-19 pandemic, these teams had maintained community through regular regional gatherings and global conferences. COVID transformed professional interactions, platforming remote work as the norm. Microsoft 365 Copilot was being rolled out during this time, and employees were encouraged to incorporate it into daily workflows. The Asia teams faced two problems: fostering workplace community when in-person meetups are infrequent, and building confidence with AI tools. They started small, organizing fun team games to share and represent their region.