Earlier this year, Microsoft announced an integrated AI assistant named “Copilot” that is slated to become an integrated feature across all of Microsoft 365’s applications. Intended to bring AI to productivity and tasks spread across applications such as Word, PowerPoint, and Excel among others, Microsoft 365 Copilot intends to imbue the power of AI into Microsoft’s existing productivity suite. As Microsoft’s investments in OpenAI pay off, the firm is ever more inclined to enhance its AI credentials and intends to compete with Google on a more firm footing. ChatGPT’s success and Bing Chat’s improving credentials have provided a boost to Microsoft, which has been working on AI solutions for quite some time now. Along with enhancing creativity and bringing continuity across platforms, Microsoft’s assistant will also aid in better analytical capabilities due to its natural language processing features.
The firm is also relying on Microsoft 365 Copilot to revitalize its existing services and provide added incentives to companies that are interested in their products. Currently being tested by several Enterprise customers, the feature will be released to the larger community on November 1, 2023, and will come with a rather steep price tag. Microsoft intends to charge $30 for their new AI assistant in addition to the existing prices levied on users who are already deploying Microsoft 365 applications in their tasks. The progress of machine learning and language model artificial intelligence has allowed Microsoft to leverage these technologies to provide an integrated suite and pointed AI assistance that connects across all applications.
Key Features of Microsoft 365 Copilot
Users can utilize several aspects of generative AI through Microsoft Copilot.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI assistant that can integrate with several applications on the Microsoft 365 suite including Word, Excel, Teams, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more. The tool brings artificial intelligence to enhance the utility as well as the scope of these applications by offering users key insights from their tasks. Microsoft Copilot can generate text, summarize points, edit content, and organize ideas. The AI assistant also brings numerous analytical capabilities that allow users to draw insights from applications such as Dynamics 365 Sales and Excel. Apart from these features, Copilot also helps users summarize key points discussed in message and email threads on Outlook, creating a platform for the collation of important points and ideas. The tech giant has also included a service similar to Otter.ai’s on its Teams service, with Microsoft 365 Copilot being capable of keeping track of important discussions and topics during meetings.
Realtime assistance and help are also made simple using the AI assistant, essentially enabling users to explore and use more features of key Office 365 applications. As Google tinkers with assistants like Codey and NotebookLM in a larger bid to create its own productivity assistant—Duet—Microsoft is keenly watching market interest in consumable AI technologies to leverage its capabilities. Through AI writing, Copilot can also write full-fledged emails and create presentations with graphics as well as elements, furthering the communicative aspect of the AI assistant. In addition, Microsoft 365 Copilot also enables data visualization and the collection of insights on Excel, expressing the big data component and deep learning aspects that have been added to the underlying AI.
Utility, Pricing, and Other Aspects of Microsoft’s Copilot AI
Microsoft 365 Copilot ensures users find it easy to draw information from across different platforms.
Microsoft placed a rather steep price on its Copilot AI service, nearly doubling the cost for its existing Microsoft 365 customers if they opt into the AI assistant. This also comes at a time when the company has announced an Enterprise tier membership for Bing Chat. Despite the exorbitant cost, Copilot is a solution that brings together responsible AI, privacy, AI safety, and productivity into a single tool. User data and information remain only within the Microsoft 365 client application on the user’s end and remain protected at all times from external threats. Alongside the extant features and attributes of Microsoft Copilot AI, the interface will also be bringing with it Microsoft 365 Chat, which will provide a conversational platform for users looking to interact with their AI assistant and gain insights on their tasks. The rollout of Copilot began gradually on September 26, 2023, and will continue until its formal release. Current rollouts are happening through Bing, Edge, and Windows 11. The release of the full suite of Microsoft 365 Copilot will happen on November 1, 2023, and will allow subscribers to access their data and information across all Microsoft 365 applications.
Copilot will use large language models hosted on Microsoft Cloud to function and carry out its stipulated tasks for users. The AI is not trained on user information or data, and the operators can choose to keep or discard information. Microsoft’s AI service will go beyond the simple question-and-answer functions as presented by AI search engines and will provide a more holistic experience to users looking for a true professional assistant to simplify tasks and handle simple commands. Current tests are being carried out by Enterprise customers, some of which happen to be Fortune 500 firms. Overall, Copilot AI promises to revolutionize the workspace environment with its key AI solution to productivity, ideation, and creativity through its extant applications and their features.
The Road Ahead for AI Assistants
AI assistants have become increasingly popular across different firms in extending consumer technology prospects.
As Microsoft moves toward the release of its AI assistant, the future of AI productivity tools looks bright. Partner firm OpenAI has also been exploring similar prospects through its flagship model GPT-4, with the addition of numerous plugins such as Advanced Data Analysis, which streamlines AI coding efforts and prospects. Google, too, has released Duet AI, which is a rival to Microsoft 365 Copilot. With enhanced applications of artificial intelligence technologies, consumer tech in the AI and ML niche is only bound to grow further. As open-source models and chatbots make their way to the market as well, further proliferation of AI productivity tools and applications will witness further interest and demand.
FAQs
1. What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Microsoft 365 Copilot is an AI interface that connects across Microsoft 365 applications and allows users to carry out numerous tasks such as generating text, visualizing data, writing emails, planning schedules, delegating tasks, and more.
2. Is Microsoft 365 Copilot free?
No, Microsoft 365 Copilot will be a paid service. The AI assistant will be priced at $30 per month per user.
3. When will Microsoft 365 Copilot be launched?
Microsoft’s AI assistant will witness broad release on November 1, 2023. While the feature is already being rolled out in its basic form through Windows 11, Bing Chat, and Edge, the feature is being extensively tested by select Enterprise customers.