Microsoft Copilot: A Leap Forward in AI-Assisted Work
Microsoft has unveiled its newest tool, the Microsoft 365 Copilot, a revolutionary large language model (LLM).
Microsoft has unveiled its newest tool, the Microsoft 365 Copilot, a revolutionary large language model (LLM) that combines the power of AI with the Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 apps to create the most powerful productivity tool on the planet.
The tool is designed to help people focus on important tasks by taking over the menial work that takes up a lot of time and energy.
Integrating Copilot into Microsoft 365 Apps
Microsoft 365 Copilot has been integrated into the apps that people use every day, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more, to help users unleash their creativity, unlock productivity, and enhance their skills.
Copilot is also launching Business Chat, an entirely new experience that can analyze and summarize chat threads, emails, documents, and calendar entries to generate relevant and actionable results. Business Chat empowers users to do things they’ve never been able to do before by using natural language prompts to create status updates or write plans based on other project files.
Copilot in Word
Copilot in Word writes, edits, summarizes, and creates right alongside users. With a simple prompt, Copilot in Word will create a first draft, bringing in information from across an organization as needed.
Copilot can add content to existing documents, summarize text, and rewrite sections or the entire document to make it more concise. It also suggests tones to help users strike the right note and improve their writing with suggestions that strengthen their arguments or smooth inconsistencies.
Copilot in Excel
Copilot in Excel helps users analyze and explore data by revealing correlations, proposing what-if scenarios, and suggesting new formulas based on questions. Copilot in Excel generates models that help users explore data without modifying it, identify trends, create powerful visualizations, or ask for recommendations to drive different outcomes.
Copilot in PowerPoint
Copilot in PowerPoint helps users turn their ideas into stunning presentations by transforming existing written documents into decks complete with speaker notes and sources or starting a new presentation from a simple prompt or outline. With natural language commands, users can adjust layouts, reformat text, and time animations.
Copilot in Outlook
Copilot in Outlook works with users in their inbox and messages to spend less time on email triage and more time on communicating. Copilot can summarize lengthy, convoluted email threads with multiple people to understand not only what has been said but the different viewpoints of each person and the open questions that have yet to be answered.
Users can respond to existing emails with a simple prompt or turn quick notes into crisp, professional messages by pulling from other emails or content that they already have access to from across Microsoft 365.
Copilot in Teams
Copilot in Teams takes the work out of working together by helping users run more effective meetings, organizing key discussion points, summarizing key actions, and catching up on missed conversations without interrupting the flow of discussion.
By adding Copilot to meetings and conversations, users now have a powerful tool to help with common tasks such as creating meeting agendas based on chat history, identifying the right people for follow-ups, and scheduling the next check-in.
Introducing Business Chat
Business Chat is a new feature introduced by Microsoft 365 Copilot that allows users to bring together data from various sources, including emails, chats, documents, presentations, notes, calendar events, and contacts, into a single, centralized view. This feature is designed to help users save time by providing them with relevant information and insights when they need it most.
With natural language prompts like “summarize the chats, emails, and documents about the customer escalation that happened last night,” Business Chat can generate a summary of relevant information based on the user’s request.
Business Chat is also designed to be a collaboration tool, allowing users to work together on projects more efficiently. For example, users can brainstorm ideas and share their progress with others in real-time, and Business Chat will automatically update the project plan based on the new information. With features like this, Business Chat is an innovative addition to the Microsoft 365 Copilot suite, and it’s sure to help businesses become more productive and efficient than ever before.
Business Chat is currently in the preview stage and is available to select customers. As Microsoft continues to test and refine the feature, it’s expected to become available to a wider audience in the near future.
Here’s a video describing all of Microsoft Copilot’s features.
Building Responsibly
As with any AI technology, Microsoft is aware that there are concerns about potential biases and ethical implications. They have stated that they are committed to responsible AI and have developed a set of principles to guide the development and deployment of AI technologies.
Microsoft 365 Copilot has been designed with these principles in mind, as well as the Responsible AI Standard, which outlines best practices for building AI systems in a responsible and ethical manner.
To ensure that Microsoft 365 Copilot is a secure and trustworthy tool for enterprise customers, Microsoft has implemented a number of measures. Copilot inherits an organization’s security, compliance, and privacy policies for Microsoft 365, and the large language models used by Copilot are not trained on customer data.
Microsoft has also built in features to prioritize human agency and control, such as providing links to sources and prompting users to review and fact-check content based on their own knowledge and judgment.
Expanding the Preview
Microsoft 365 Copilot is currently being tested by 20 customers, including eight Fortune 500 enterprises. The previews will be expanded to more customers in the coming months, with IT admins being given new controls to plan and enable Copilot across their organizations.
The future of AI-assisted work
Microsoft 365 Copilot represents a significant step forward in the development of AI-assisted work. By combining large language models with business data and the Microsoft 365 apps, Copilot has the potential to revolutionize the way we work by freeing us from mundane tasks and allowing us to focus on the work that really matters.
The benefits of Copilot are already being felt by developers who have used GitHub Copilot, which is built on the same technology as Microsoft 365 Copilot. In a recent survey, 88% of developers who had used GitHub Copilot reported that they were more productive, while 77% said the tool helped them spend less time searching for information.
As AI-assisted work becomes more common, it is natural to wonder what the implications will be for jobs. While some tasks may be automated, AI is also creating new opportunities for workers to upskill and focus on more valuable work. Microsoft 365 Copilot is designed to work alongside users, empowering them to be more creative and productive, and helping them to uplevel their skills.
The future of work is here, and Microsoft 365 Copilot is at the forefront of this transformation. As Microsoft expands its previews of Copilot to more customers in the coming months, it’s clear that the power of AI-assisted work is no longer a thing of the future but a reality of today.
Copilot will be included in existing Dynamics 365 licenses at no additional cost upon release, according to Microsoft.
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