Thursday, March 16th 2023

Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot: Your Copilot for Work

On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. announced it is bringing the power of next-generation AI to its workplace productivity tools with Microsoft 365 Copilot. Currently in testing with select commercial customers, Copilot combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with business data and the Microsoft 365 apps, to unleash creativity, unlock productivity and up-level skills.

Customers will experience Microsoft 365 Copilot in two ways
Microsoft 365 Copilot isn't just a better way of doing the same things. It's an entirely new way of working. Copilot will work alongside Microsoft 365 customers in two ways:
  • First, it is embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps people use every day—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more.
  • Today, the company also announced an entirely new experience: Business Chat. Business Chat works across the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and a customer's calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings and contacts to do things that people weren't able to do before. With natural language prompts like "tell my team how we updated the product strategy," Business Chat will generate a status update based on the morning's meetings, emails and chat threads.
    With Copilot, the customer is always in control. Customers decide what to keep, modify or discard. With these new tools, people can be more creative in Word, more analytical in Excel, more expressive in PowerPoint, more productive in Outlook and more collaborative in Teams.
"Copilot combines the power of large language models with your data and apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet," said Jared Spataro, corporate vice president, Modern Work and Business Applications, Microsoft. "By grounding in your business content and context, Copilot delivers results that are relevant and actionable. It's enterprise-ready, built on Microsoft's comprehensive approach to security, compliance, privacy and responsible AI. Copilot marks a new era of computing that will fundamentally transform the way we work."

A whole new way to work
Microsoft 365 Copilot is seamlessly integrated in the apps people use every day, helping them stay in the flow of work and freeing them to focus more on the task at hand and less on the busy work.
  • Copilot in Word writes, edits, summarizes and creates right alongside people as they work.
  • Copilot in PowerPoint enables the creation process by turning ideas into a designed presentation through natural language commands.
  • Copilot in Excel helps unlock insights, identify trends or create professional-looking data visualizations in a fraction of the time.
  • Copilot in Outlook can help synthesize and manage the inbox to allow more time to be spent on actually communicating.
  • Copilot in Teams makes meetings more productive with real-time summaries and action items directly in the context of the conversation.
  • Copilot in Power Platform will help developers of all skill levels accelerate and streamline development with low-code tools with the introduction of two new capabilities within Power Apps and Power Virtual Agents.
  • Business Chat brings together data from across documents, presentations, email, calendar, notes and contacts to help summarize chats, write emails, find key dates or even write a plan based on other project files.
Microsoft has built Microsoft 365 Copilot with its existing commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise, grounded in AI principles and Responsible AI Standard and decades of research. Copilot's large language models are not trained on customer content or on individual prompts. Microsoft 365 Copilot will deliver enterprise-ready AI at scale.

Earlier this month Microsoft announced Dynamics 365 Copilot as the world's first AI Copilot in both CRM and ERP to bring the next-generation AI to every line of business. And now, Copilot is coming to all Microsoft productivity apps—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, Microsoft Viva, Power Platform and more. Specifics on pricing and licensing will be shared soon. Microsoft 365 Copilot is already being tested with a small group of customers to get the critical feedback required to improve these models as they scale.
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20 Comments on Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot: Your Copilot for Work

#1
Selaya
yeah.
i think not.
Posted on Reply
#2
sam_86314
Joke's on them, my employer still uses Office 2016 because fuck subscriptions and SaaS.

Kinda sad that M$ corrupted OpenAI, but hey, at least development on this kind of stuff has accelerated significantly.
Posted on Reply
#3
erek
Selayayeah.
i think not.
what about GitHub Copilot?

seems like an odd conflict on the product name
Posted on Reply
#4
mama
So AI then. Well, I think the results will be bumpy but I'm up for a laugh.
Posted on Reply
#5
Frick
Fishfaced Nincompoop
sam_86314Joke's on them, my employer still uses Office 2016 because fuck subscriptions and SaaS.

Kinda sad that M$ corrupted OpenAI, but hey, at least development on this kind of stuff has accelerated significantly.
So what was the purpose of OpenAI?
Posted on Reply
#7
lemonadesoda
Ferrum MasterClippy, is that you?
On steroids.

What next? Copilot will prepare summaries of your productivity for your boss
Posted on Reply
#8
Dredi
erekwhat about GitHub Copilot?

seems like an odd conflict on the product name
MS owns github. There is no conflict.
Posted on Reply
#9
Ferrum Master
lemonadesodaOn steroids.

What next? Copilot will prepare summaries of your productivity for your boss
There's no copilot needed for dumb stuff like that.
Posted on Reply
#10
Dredi
Ferrum MasterThere's no copilot needed for dumb stuff like that.
Yeah. Just quit if your boss is that much of an idiot. ”Productivity summaries” is so dumb way to spend any time. If your boss does not know what you do, then he is out of touch. Get out of failing companies.
Posted on Reply
#11
lemonadesoda
Cant wait for copilot to write emails to my boss, and for his copilot to answer them. Ad infinitum
Posted on Reply
#12
bonehead123
"co-pilot did it"
honest boss, it wasn't ME, I swear :D
Posted on Reply
#13
Darmok N Jalad
lemonadesodaCant wait for copilot to write emails to my boss, and for his copilot to answer them. Ad infinitum
One of my favorite Office moments was receiving an attachment that was titled “copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of copy of (file name).xls”
Posted on Reply
#14
TumbleGeorge
I'm waiting for "my' copilot to give me an answer of my action: "I don't allow this operation in Excel"
Posted on Reply
#15
ThrashZone
lemonadesodaOn steroids.

What next? Copilot will prepare summaries of your productivity for your boss
Hi,
Hell I was expecting to see an ms travel coffee mug or big gulp mug :laugh:
Posted on Reply
#16
dragontamer5788
FrickSo what was the purpose of OpenAI?
To make money, especially off the "Open" name. They aren't open source, their models aren't open. They run a SAAS model where you pay $$$ per token consumed. They're aiming to profit off of this tech.

Anyway, its their perrogative to make money off of something they made. I just find the "Open" nomenclature to be extremely dishonest.
Posted on Reply
#17
rbgc
mamaSo AI then. Well, I think the results will be bumpy but I'm up for a laugh.
Did you try ChatGPT to generate something like source code, scripts, CLI commands, reports, compare, summarize or analyze something? I use it daily in my work and output from AI is fantastic already. Game changer and time saver. Unbelievable. Something like jump 20 years forward in productivity. Copilot is based on similar technologies so results will be similar.
Posted on Reply
#18
erek
TumbleGeorgeI'm waiting for "my' copilot to give me an answer of my action: "I don't allow this operation in Excel"
Cant you use a hex editor on the Excel binary to reverse the conditional for that exception?

as I recall 75 is Jne (jump if not equal) and 74 is (jump if equal)

just reverse whatever it is prior to this message address
Posted on Reply
#20
TumbleGeorge
Copilot is available for Android now, soon for iOS?
Posted on Reply
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