Microsoft: Microsoft brings AI-powered ‘Copilot’ to Word, PowerPoint and more: What this means for users
Microsoft 365 Copilot availability
The company said that it is currently testing Microsoft 365 Copilot with 20 customers, including eight in Fortune 500 enterprises. It noted that the company will be expanding these previews to customers more broadly in the coming months.
How does Microsoft 365 Copilot work
Microsoft explained that Microsoft 365 Copilot combines “the power of large language models (LLMs)” with users’ data in the Microsoft Graph, which includes calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more to provide a comprehensive output.
“And it does so within our existing commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise,” the company said in a statement.
Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word
Copilot in Word will write, edit, summarise, and even create a draft after getting a brief input from the user. Microsoft said that the draft will also include information from across organisations if needed. Additionally, it can add content to existing documents, summarise and/ or rewrite sections or the entire document to make it more concise.
The company is also adding tonal behaviour enabling users to add tones – from professional to passionate and casual to thankful. “Copilot can also help you improve your writing with suggestions that strengthen your arguments or smooth inconsistencies,” it said.
Microsoft 365 Copilot in Excel
Copilot in Excel will help workers analyse and explore their data. For example, users can ask questions, such as, “Give a breakdown of the sales by type and channel. Insert a table”, it will return “correlations, propose what-if scenarios, and suggest new formulas based on your questions—generating models based on your questions that help you explore your data without modifying it.”
Microsoft 365 Copilot in PowerPoint
Copilot in PowerPoint can turn simple ideas into presentations. Apart from making presentations by fetching data from a Word document and glamorising with stock photos and text designs, Copilot can transform existing written documents into decks complete with speaker notes.
Users can also condense lengthy presentations and use natural language commands to adjust layouts, reformat text and time animations.
Microsoft 365 Copilot in Outlook
Copilot in Outlook will assist users to communicate better, faster, and more easily. Microsoft claimed that Copilot in Outlook works with inbox and messages, summarise lengthy email threads to make you understand the gist of the matter being discussed, and respond to an existing email with a simple prompt.
Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams
Copilot in Teams will assist users run more effective meetings by speeding up the conversation, organising key discussion points, and summarising key actions.
“In your chat, Copilot gets you answers to specific questions or catches you up on anything you’ve missed, all without interrupting the flow of discussion,” Microsoft said.
Microsoft Business Chat
Microsoft also announced Business Chat experience that uses Microsoft Graph to bring together data from across your documents, presentations, email, calendar, notes, and contacts.
For example, if you are hosting an award function at your company, Business Chat will acquire data from various source points in the company and summarise it for you so that you can work on resolving problems and/or working on next steps instead of getting occupied in understanding developments happening in that regard.
Business Chat in Microsoft Teams is available for preview customers, Microsoft said.
