Microsoft on Thursday announced that it is bringing the power of next-generation AI (artificial intelligence) to Office 365 apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook Mail, Teams, and more with ‘Microsoft 365 Copilot — your copilot for work’.
Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology, the Microsoft Copilot combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph and the Microsoft 365 apps.
The tool is aimed to help users with creating documents, emails, and presentations, as well as add content to existing documents, summarise texts, and much more. It will be visible as a chatbot in Microsoft 365 apps in the sidebar.
“Today marks the next major step in the evolution of how we interact with computing, which will fundamentally change the way we work and unlock a new wave of productivity growth,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft Chairman and CEO, said in a blog post.
“With our new copilot for work, we’re giving people more agency and making technology more accessible through a universal interface — natural language.”
According to Microsoft, the new tool is integrated into Microsoft 365 in two ways: as an embed to Microsoft 365 apps that you use every day — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more to unleash creativity, unlock productivity and uplevel skills.
Secondly, as a Business Chat that works across the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and the customer’s calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts.
“With Copilot, you’re always in control. You decide what to keep, modify or discard. Now, you can be more creative in Word, more analytical in Excel, more expressive in PowerPoint, more productive in Outlook and more collaborative in Teams,” said the company.
“Copilot combines the power of large language models with your data and apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet,” said Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President, of Modern Work and Business Applications, Microsoft.
“By grounding in your business content and context, Copilot delivers results that are relevant and actionable. It’s enterprise-ready, built on Microsoft’s comprehensive approach to security, compliance, privacy and responsible AI. Copilot marks a new era of computing that will fundamentally transform the way we work.”
Copilot brings something different for every Microsoft 365 app. Here’s how it will work on each of the below apps:
- Copilot in Wordwrites, edits, summarizes and creates right alongside people as they work.
- Copilot in PowerPoint enables the creation process by turning ideas into a designed presentation through natural language commands.
- Copilot in Excel helps unlock insights, identify trends or create professional-looking data visualizations in a fraction of the time.
- Copilot in Outlook can help synthesize and manage the inbox to allow more time to be spent on actually communicating.
- Copilot in Teams makes meetings more productive with real-time summaries and action items directly in the context of the conversation.
- Copilot in Power Platform will help developers of all skill levels accelerate and streamline development with low-code tools with the introduction of two new capabilities within Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents.
- Business Chat brings together data from across documents, presentations, emails, calendars, notes, and contacts to help summarize chats, write emails, find key dates or even write a plan based on other project files.
Currently, Microsoft is testing the Copilot in Microsoft 365 with 20 customers, including 8 in Fortune 500 enterprises. It also has plans to expand the access in preview to a wider audience in the coming months. More information about the pricing and licensing of the tool is expected to be revealed by the company in the near future.
