Microsoft 365 Getting Copilot, a GPT-4-Powered AI Assistant That Works Alongside You

The software giant has announced that Microsoft 365 is getting Copilot, a GPT-4-powered AI assistant that'll help you through work-related tasks, such as generating texts for documents or creating presentations, among others.

"It works alongside you, embedded in the apps millions of people use everyday: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more," said Microsoft 365 Corporate Vice President Jared Spataro. "Copilot is a whole new way of working."

Copilot can be accessed via a chatbot in the sidebar of supported Microsoft 365 apps. The assistant can show information on your meeting, brief you on projects and update you on what you might have missed while you were out on leave or vacation, to name a few examples.

In Teams, it can transcribe your meetings, send you reminders and summarise action points throughout your session. In Office, meanwhile, it can generate text for Word documents and create a 10-slide PowerPoint presentation based on it, for example. It can also create a SWOT analysis or a PivotTable based on data you feed it in Excel. In Outlook, it can summarise email threads and draft responses for you, with toggles for adjusting tone or length.

Spataro did, however, note that Copilot is not without its limitations. "Sometimes Copilot will get it right, other times it will be usefully wrong, giving you an idea that’s not perfect but still gives you a head start." But he also said that it's important for Microsoft to move quickly and roll out the technology not only to meet the needs of its users but to receive feedback for it as well.

Microsoft is currently testing Copilot with a limited number of Microsoft 365 customers. The company plans to expand testing to more customers and share pricing details in the coming months.

The new technology, as previously mentioned, is running on OpenAI's latest GPT language model, GPT-4, the same system powering the recently-upgraded Bing search engine. Microsoft says the new model boasts higher performance and is less likely to go off the rails compared to its predecessor, GPT-3.5.

Microsoft's announcement of Copilot comes only a couple of days after Google unveiled it would also be rolling out generative AI tools for its Workspace productivity apps. Similar to Copilot, Google's Workspace AI can help you compose emails, write documents and generate formulas for spreadsheets.