Meet Copilot, Microsoft's AI tool for work and productivity

Microsoft 365 apps now have an AI assistant that's lightyears ahead of Clippy.

On Thursday, Microsoft announced Microsoft 365 Copilot, a tool that combines large language models (LLMs) with 365 apps and Microsoft Graph's user data into a productivity beast. Copilot works within Microsoft 365's app ecosystem which includes Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Outlook, and Teams. As Microsoft showed us in the announcement, it can generate ideas, build reports and documents in Word and PowerPoint by pulling information from your calendar, emails, and contact lists. In Outlook, Copilot can compose and refine emails, and in Teams, it can summarize conversations and identify tasks and assignments. Copilot can even transcribe live meetings and create notes and summaries.

Copilot can pull data from other Microsoft apps to generate text in Word. Credit: Microsoft

Microsoft also announced a new tool called Business Chat, which is a lot like Bing Chat or ChatGPT but works for you like an AI executive assistant. Like Copilot, Business Chat pulls information from your business data and apps, but can also be accessed through Bing or Microsoft365.com in addition to Teams through your work account.

Via Giphy

Copilot is currently being tested with a small group of customers and will be available to Microsoft365 apps in the coming months. Microsoft didn't share licensing and pricing information yet, but said that would come soon.

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