How AI is Changing Microsoft 365 – Copilot is Coming Soon!
In recent times, the hype about AI and AI-powered tools is known to everyone on the planet. From the intelligent writing of text based on simple prompts from ChatGPT to the creative generation of graphics from Midjourney, it has been a ride. It wasn’t only limited to the big names either; many businesses came into the spotlight for coming up with their own AI models. What a rollercoaster!
And the journey is only at its beginning, here comes another big news. An extensive AI tool by Microsoft that’s not only limited to generating text – Copilot.
Let’s explore it more.
What is Copilot?
Microsoft announced its next-generation AI, Copilot on March 16, 2023. It brings together the Large Language Model (LLM) with your data in the Microsoft 365 apps and Microsoft Graph.
The claims associated with this tool are mind-boggling. It assists you in your day-to-day business tasks across all Microsoft apps.
Microsoft claims that it’s not another ChatGPT integrated into Microsoft apps, but an intelligent connection of LLM, GPT-4, and your data in Microsoft 365 apps.
Extensiveness of Copilot
Copilot is more like your personal assistant throughout the cycle of your business tasks. Following is a little summarization of how the magic of Copilot works in various tools:
MS Word – Start writing with an initial draft generated by Copilot. Give it easy commands based on natural language or even feed it the files, it will come up with a great outcome for you.
MS PowerPoint – Creating presentations cannot get easier than this. Simply feed content files to the Copilot and a prompt for it to generate an effective presentation for you (it can even create a presentation based on your input number of slides)
MS Excel – Visualize your data trends in a matter of a few natural language commands. It takes in the whole data and provides you with the answers to your asked questions with ease.
MS Outlook – Clear your inbox and send professional messages by only entering a bit of context in the natural language.
MS Teams – Generate meeting notes and the summary of meetings in a matter of few clicks. That too in real-time.
MS Power Platform – Automate the repetitive tasks by the chatbots that align with your requirements.
Benefits of Copilot
Although the extensiveness of the tool leaves no space to discuss benefits separately, let’s take a quick look at three main benefits:
Insights that align with your business data
Assurance of your data privacy and security
Integrated across the Microsoft 365 suite
What do people think about Copilot?
Since the announcement of Copilot by Microsoft, it has been the talk of the town. More demonstrations were given during the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event on April 4th. People have mixed views. Some consider it a breakthrough in the business world and an opportunity to adapt and increment growth. Some are conservative about the demerits associated with AI dominance.
However, whether we accept it or not, AI is taking the world by storm. It’s the right time to adapt to the functionality of these tools to enhance our creativity and productivity.
Bringing it all Together
Like all of us digital geeks, everyone is excited to explore Microsoft Copilot and its massive range of functionalities. Microsoft has not announced the licensing and pricing of the tool yet, but surely that’s on the way soon too. To get a glimpse until it is released, here is a Twitter thread covering the demo of Copilot.
