On March 16, 2023, Microsoft came with a big announcement. Introduced as “The most powerful productivity tool on the planet.” Microsoft has made big claims about how game-changing the Copilot can be.
What is Copilot?
Before exploring how Microsoft has incorporated Copilot, let us discover its primary idea and purpose. Copilot uses machine learning; an excellent example of Copilot before Microsoft would be its extension on VS code, an IDE to write code. It used AI to generate code suggestions and autocomplete code, making coding more efficient and reducing the need for manual coding. The one used by VScode is a cloud-based artificial intelligence tool developed by GitHub and OpenAI, known as GitHub Copilot.
Check GitHub Copilot here: GitHub Copilot ยท Your AI pair programmer.
Microsoft 365 Copilot
The Copilot integrated by Microsoft is a subproduct of this GPT-3 model. It has been specifically trained on publicly available data. And Microsoft has added benefits like integrating with Microsoft 365 apps inheriting Microsoft’s security, compliance, and privacy policies and processes.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is a new feature that combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into actions. It works alongside you, embedded in the apps you use daily, such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more, to help unleash creativity and unlock productivity and uplevel skills.
The basic idea of using it is that the user will enter a prompt and type in what it requires. Like Chat GPT or Dall E, whatever you write acts as an input, generating the output according to its learnings.
Each app brings with it a sense of excitement. With PowerPoint, users can share documents based on which they want to design their presentation. Moreover, instead of adding sample or test media, users can specify the folders they wish to use in their presentation, and the Copilot will add that to their presentation. This will immensely increase productivity and allow users to work in parallel and multitask between several tasks.
Moreover, in Excel, with the growing field of Data Sciences and Analysts, Excel with Copilot can become a potent tool in this field. For laborious tasks like Data cleaning and wrangling, Copilot can be asked to perform specified tasks, which users would otherwise have to do manually.
Similarly, all Microsoft 365 apps bring strong potential, which we are very excited to witness. Along with current apps, Microsoft is releasing new features like “Business Chat” to increase the productivity of all stakeholders involved.
In conclusion, the Copilot is a vital tool when incorporated with an enterprise like Microsoft; the future looks bright. Microsoft has currently released the Copilot only for testing amongst 20 customers. And have plans to expand further. However, no date or period is stated. Microsoft has said that all users with access to Microsoft 365 will soon have access to the Copilot.
The era of Artificial Intelligence is upon us.
