Microsoft introduces AI-powered ‘Copilot’ for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, among other applications.

Microsoft launched a new Artificial Intelligence-powered Copilot for its Microsoft 365 applications and services on Thursday. The AI-powered Copilot is intended to help users create papers, emails, presentations, and much more.

“Today, we are putting the power of next-generation AI to work. Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot, your work copilot. It blends the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 applications to transform your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet,” the business said on its website.

The Copilot, which is powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, “is connected to Microsoft 365 in two ways. It works alongside you, integrated into the Microsoft 365 products you use every day — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more — to release creativity, unlock productivity, and uplevel abilities, according to the tech behemoth.

“Today represents the next important step in the development of how we engage with computers,” stated Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft. “With our new Copilot for work, we’re giving people more agency and making technology more accessible using the most universal interface – natural language,” the company said.

“Today we’re also unveiling an altogether new experience: Business Chat,” the business said. Business Chat integrates with the LLM, the Microsoft 365 applications, and your data – your calendar, emails, conversations, documents, meetings, and contacts — to enable you to achieve things you couldn’t previously. You may give it natural language instructions like “Tell my team how we changed the product plan,” and it will produce a status update based on the meetings, emails, and chat threads from the morning.”

Microsoft 365 Copilot, according to Microsoft, will alter work in three ways: liberate creativity, empower productivity, and uplevel capabilities.

“Let your imagination go wild. “With Copilot in Word, you can jump-start the creative process so you never have to start from scratch again,” the company says, adding that “Copilot provides you a first draft to edit and iterate on – saving hours in writing, sourcing, and editing time.”

“Sometimes Copilot will be correct, other times constructively wrong – but it will always bring you farther ahead. As the author, you are always in command, pushing your unique ideas forward and motivating Copilot to cut, revise, or provide comments.

With simple instructions, Copilot in PowerPoint allows you to build attractive presentations by integrating relevant material from a document you created last week or last year. “You can also analyze patterns and generate professional-looking data visualizations in seconds with Copilot in Excel,” it said.

With regard to unlocking productivity, the corporation noted, “We all want to concentrate on the 20 percent of our work that truly counts, yet 80 percent of our time is wasted with busywork that bogs us down. Copilot helps to ease the strain. Copilot in Outlook lets you empty your inbox in minutes, not hours, by summarizing extensive email conversations and swiftly generating recommended answers.

And every meeting with Copilot in Teams is a fruitful one. It may summarize important conversation aspects, such as who said what and where individuals agree and disagree, and propose action items in real-time during a meeting. And with Power Platform’s Copilot, anybody can automate repetitive chores, build chatbots, and get from concept to functional app in minutes.”

GitHub data reveals that Copilot promises to unleash productivity for everyone, according to Microsoft. Of developers who use GitHub Copilot, 88% report being more productive, 74% report being able to concentrate on more rewarding work, and 77% report spending less time looking for knowledge or examples.

“Yet, Copilot does more than boost individual productivity. It develops a new knowledge model for each organization, using the huge pool of data and insights that are now unavailable and unused.

Business Chat integrates with all of your company data and applications to expose the information and insights you need from a sea of data – allowing knowledge to move freely across the organization and saving you important time looking for solutions. “You will be able to use Business Chat through Microsoft 365.com, Bing when logged in with your work account, or Teams,” the company said.

“Copilot makes you better at what you’re excellent at and allows you to fast, master, what you’ve yet to learn,” says the author. The typical individual utilizes just a few instructions from the many available in Microsoft 365, such as ‘animate a slide’ or ‘insert a table’. All of that sophisticated capability is now accessible via natural language. And this is only the start.

“Copilot will profoundly alter how humans interact with AI and how AI interacts with humans. There will be a learning curve, as with any new pattern of work, but those who embrace this new method of working will soon acquire an advantage,” Microsoft noted.