Do we still need a Sharepoint intranet in the age of AI?

For years, we've designed intranets around the assumption that employees will come to the intranet and look for information. But what happens when employees stop browsing your Intranet and ask AI instead?

Why click through five menus when they can ask one question and get the answers they need?

1. AI needs somewhere to get its answers

AI doesn't magically know your company's policies, processes, organisational structure or project information.

It needs your content.

SharePoint is increasingly becoming an important knowledge layer for Microsoft Copilot and SharePoint agents. SharePoint sites and document libraries can have AI agents that answer questions using content the employee has permission to access.

The employee may never visit that HR page again. But AI might.

That’s why the boring policy page sitting in SharePoint becomes much more important.

2. Someone still has to decide what is trustworthy

Let's go back to our leave policy example.

You ask: "What is our sick leave policy?"

AI gives you an answer.

But which document did it use?

The 2021 PDF? The 2024 HR page? The document sitting in an old departmental library?

This is where SharePoint governance becomes an AI problem.

What makes content trustworthy?

Someone still needs to decide:

• What is the source of truth?
• Who owns the content?
• When was it last reviewed?
• Which version is current?
• Who should have access?
• What should be archived?
• What should be deleted?

AI can retrieve knowledge but someone still has to make sure that knowledge deserves to be retrieved.

3. Your intranet is more than a very expensive search box

Imagine opening your company intranet on a Monday morning.

You see a message from your CEO.

There's a story about a team that just won an important client.

There's a reminder about the town hall.

There's a new learning programme.

Someone has been recognised for ten years with the company.

You weren't looking for any of that.

You discovered it.

• Company identity
• Leadership visibility
• Internal communications
• Employee communities
• Recognition
• Culture
• Events
• Resources
• Self-service experiences

AI is excellent when you know what you want.

An intranet can be valuable when you don't yet know what you want.

4. Not everything should become a conversation

Imagine your CEO publishes an important company announcement.

You could ask:

"Hey Copilot, what did the CEO say today?"

And get a three-line summary.

Is it efficient? Absolutely.

But would you get the same experience as seeing the announcement, reading the message, understanding the context and discovering the related stories around it? Probably not.

There is something about visual storytelling, context and serendipitous discovery that a question-and-answer interface doesn't always provide.

Sometimes you don't know what you need until you see it.

5. The homepage can still influence user behaviour

AI responds to what you ask.

An intranet can introduce you to something you didn't know you needed.

You might open the intranet to check a travel policy and discover

• A new employee benefit
• An upcoming town hall
• A leadership message
• A learning opportunity
• An employee recognition story
• An important company announcement

The homepage can act like a company's noticeboard, newspaper and frontdoor.

That still has value.

For years, we've designed navigation to help people understand where information lives.

With AI, we also need to think whether the information is structured well enough for AI to understand, retrieve and use.

So what does an AI-ready SharePoint intranet look like?

An AI-ready intranet needs:

1. Trusted content

Employees and AI need to know which information is authoritative.

2. Strong governance

Content needs owners, review dates and lifecycle management.

3. Clean information architecture

Information needs meaningful structure and context.

4. Accurate permissions

AI agents need to respect the same access boundaries employees alreadyhave. SharePoint agents use content the user has permission to access.

5. Content that makes sense to AI

Pages and documents need to be clear, current, structured and meaningful.

Because your employees might stop browsing your intranet. Your AI won't.

So... do we still need SharePoint intranets?

Yes, but the real question is:

Do we still need intranets designed for employees to browse?

The future may be an intranet employees visit less often.

Its content may show up through Copilot, agents, Teams and other places where employees already work. Microsoft is already expanding SharePoint's AI capabilities and bringing interactive SharePoint experiences into the Copilot canvas.

So perhaps the future of the intranet is less about being a destination employees must visit.

And more about the intelligence underneath the employee experience.

So, the approach towards modern intranets may change from:

"How do we make employees use the intranet more?"

To:

"How do we make our intranet useful even when employees never open it?"