How Microsoft 365 Copilot Will Kickstart the Future of Work

At its AI event on 16 March 2023, Microsoft announced the coming release of its latest product, Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Built on OpenAI’s generative AI technology (AI that can generate content), Microsoft 365 Copilot is set to revolutionise the way we work. Microsoft calls it “the future of work”.

That’s where Copilot comes in.

Microsoft quoted data from GitHub, finding that 88% of developers who used GitHub Copilot are more productive, 77% are spending less time hunting down information and 74% can spend their time on more satisfying work.

Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot extends OpenAI’s GPT-4 technology and Microsoft’s existing software to provide the capability to answer questions, create content and summarise data, conversations and notes.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a natural (human) language AI tool that will be embedded in Microsoft 365 in two ways:

1. Integration with the Microsoft Office suite of applications.
2. Business Chat – a new product that works across all your data and apps.

Integration with M365 Apps

Microsoft 365 Copilot will be integrated with the Microsoft 365 apps you work with every day and will enable better integration of those apps.

For example, if you’re working on a PowerPoint presentation, Copilot can retrieve data from an Excel spreadsheet and insert a simplified table into your presentation. Likewise, it can take text from a Word document and insert summarised bullet points into a slide.

Business Chat

Business Chat works across the large language model (LLM – AI that can recognise, process and generate natural language), Microsoft 365 apps and your data (calendar, email, chats, documents and meetings). You talk to Business Chat using a chatbot interface.

Business Chat works by taking your natural language prompts such as, “Tell me our projected sales figures for the next quarter.” The chatbot will analyse your data to provide you with the requested information. You can then ask Business Chat to present the data to you in different ways, such as an Excel chart or a PowerPoint presentation.

Copilot is your copilot

Microsoft 365 Copilot is built with checks and filters, so security compliance and privacy standards are applied. But the product can only work with the data it can access.

It is up to you to check and review Copilot’s output for errors, inconsistencies and privacy breaches before you share any information it generates. At all times, you have the power to edit, adjust, delete and start again with the content Copilot creates.

Examples of Copilot’s Capabilities

Microsoft predicts that Copilot will let your words become the most powerful and productive tool you have access to.

Putting it simply, Microsoft 365 Copilot makes your work easier and more enjoyable by taking your prompts as input to eliminate tedious tasks. Working with Microsoft 365 apps, you can use Copilot to perform a myriad of tasks.

Excel

Copilot can present your sales pipeline in a graph highlighting the sales representative, value of the deal and expected closing date. It could highlight anomalies like deals that are meant to close next week but a proposal hasn’t been submitted to the client.

Outlook

Copilot can summarise the email you received while you were on annual leave. It can flag the important messages that require your response and file the rest. It can draft responses to your email and invite the relevant people to a meeting to discuss any issues that came up while you were away.

PowerPoint

Copilot can take a Word document about your company and transform it into a 20-minute presentation for prospective clients. It can insert images extracted from your files and turn Excel data into easy-to-read tables.

According to Microsoft, the average worker uses 10% of PowerPoint’s capabilities. Imagine what you can achieve when Copilot unlocks the other 90%.

Teams

Copilot can provide you with a summary of a meeting you missed when you were on annual leave. It can provide bullet points about the topics discussed and a table of action items.

Word

Copilot can draft a business proposal using your client’s Request for Proposal, previous proposals and your company information as inputs. It can generate a one-page executive summary, cite all sources and insert images, graphs and tables.

FAQs

Want to learn more about how Microsoft is using AI to transform the way we work?

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