Microsoft 365 Copilot: Office gets AI features

On March 17, 2023By Garmin Philip

“Clippy 2.0”

There used to be Clippy: an entertaining but unhelpful assistant for Excel, Word and Co. The manufacturer is now getting serious about Microsoft 365 Copilot.

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AI processor - artificial intelligence, neural network (icon image) — AI will probably turn our everyday work upside down. Microsoft is the first.

Microsoft 365 Copilot will actively support you in Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more in the future. The manufacturer announces that the classic office tools will receive an integration of modern artificial intelligence (AI) functions. Copilot is currently being tested at select companies and will eventually make its way into productivity programs.

Microsoft 365 Copilot brings together large language models, business data, and the Microsoft 365 Apps to “reshape the way you work,” as Microsoft describes it. The manufacturer lists the following as examples of applications:

word: The co-pilot writes, edits, summarizes and creates.
PowerPoint: The co-pilot can convert your ideas, which you communicate to him by voice, directly into presentations.
Excel: The Copilot creates new insights into your data, reads trends and creates professional charts in a short time.
Outlook: Copilot helps manage your mailbox so you “have more time to actually communicate.”
Teams: Copilot makes meetings more productive with real-time logging and tools that follow the context of a conversation.
PowerPlatform: The Copilot will support developers of all experience levels to speed up the coding work.
Business Chat: Copilot uses data from documents, presentations, emails, calendars, notes and more to create summaries, key dates and project plans.

For example, Business Chat lets you give directions like, “Summarize for my team how we updated our product strategy.” The copilot then writes status updates based on meetings, chats and emails.

Interacting with systems is done with Microsoft 365 Copilot more and more designed for voice control. Users remain in control of their own data, while Microsoft takes care of data security and business privacy current AI Policies prescribes, so at least the promise.