Microsoft has announced a new AI-powered upgrade to its productivity apps called Microsoft 365 Copilot. The system uses large language models, user data in Microsoft Graph, and the company’s applications to provide new AI-backed features that allow users to quickly generate documents, spreadsheets, presentations, draft emails, or coordinate meetings and quickly surface relevant content on Microsoft Teams.
Users can access the new Copilot features in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and other productivity applications. Microsoft’s Chairman and CEO, Satya Nadella, revealed the new Microsoft 365 Copilot during the company’s Microsoft 365 AI event on Thursday. The service uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology, and Microsoft says it uses “the Copilot System,” a combination of its apps, user data, and a large language model.
Microsoft demonstrated various functionalities of the Copilot system, including the ability to quickly generate presentations or speeches using personalized images and messages. Copilot can also draft emails based on natural language commands or generate a draft for a specific document and rephrase it in the user’s writing style. Meetings on Microsoft Teams will also benefit from Copilot integration, allowing users to access real-time summaries of meetings or help sort through several messages on the messaging app.
Microsoft says that it is currently testing Microsoft 365 Copilot with select commercial customers to glean feedback while improving the system before it’s rolled out more widely. There’s no word on availability or pricing for the new Copilot feature.
Microsoft also announced another feature called Business Chat, a tightly integrated system that draws data and information from a variety of sources, including documents, presentations, email, calendar, notes, and contacts. The new Business Chat feature will allow users to generate emails, find information in their Microsoft account quickly, generate plans, or a SWOT analysis with a single command.
The Copilot system has built-in safeguards, including Try Again buttons that allow the AI-based service to have another go at generating content based on the user’s natural language commands. Microsoft says that Copilot will also provide links and citations to sources, and users will be prompted to fact-check, review, and modify content.
