Microsoft 365 applications are set to receive an upgrade with the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) codenamed Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft has announced the upcoming release of Microsoft 365 Copilot, which combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with business data and Microsoft 365 applications to improve workplace productivity.
The new tool is currently being tested with select commercial customers and offers users an entirely new way of working. Copilot will work alongside users in two ways: by being embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps people use every day, and by offering an entirely new experience called Business Chat.
Business Chat works across LLM, Microsoft 365 apps, and a customer’s calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts. It generates status updates based on the morning’s meetings, emails, and chat threads through natural language prompts like “tell my team how we updated the product strategy”.
Copilot is designed to be enterprise-ready, with a comprehensive approach to security, compliance, privacy, and responsible AI. It marks a new era of computing that will transform the way people work.
Copilot is seamlessly integrated into the apps people use every day, freeing them to focus more on the task at hand and less on the busy work. In Word, Copilot writes, edits, summarizes, and creates right alongside people as they work. PowerPoint enables the creation process by turning ideas into a designed presentation through natural language commands.
In Excel, it helps unlock insights, identify trends, or create professional-looking data visualizations in a fraction of the time. In Outlook, it can help synthesize and manage the inbox to allow more time to be spent on actual communication. In Teams, Copilot 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, emails, calendars, 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 Standards and decades of research. Copilot’s large language models are not trained on customer content or individual prompts. 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.
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. Copilot is now coming to all Microsoft productivity apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, Microsoft Viva, Power Platform, and more.
Specifics on pricing and licensing will be shared soon. Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) aims to enable digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge, empowering every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.
