Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft’s approach to enhancing productivity through generative AI. As Microsoft expands its AI capabilities, Copilot plays an integral role in various software and services, ranging from email summarization to code generation.
In this article, we provide an overview of the diverse Copilot offerings, their functionalities, and the distinctions between premium and free versions. The aim is to help users navigate and leverage these tools effectively.
What is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft Copilot, initially branded as Bing Chat, is integrated into Microsoft’s search engine, Bing, as well as Windows 10 and 11, and the Microsoft Edge sidebar. Fine-tuned versions of OpenAI’s models empower Copilot, allowing it to perform a wide array of tasks upon natural language requests, from writing poems and essays to summarizing web sources. Unlike some other AI systems restricted to offline information, Copilot can browse the web for current updates, providing an edge in timely information retrieval. However, it is not infallible and may occasionally present errors or outdated data.
Copilot’s capabilities extend beyond textual outputs. For example, it integrates with Image Creator, which leverages OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 model to generate images. Users can type commands like “Create an image of a zebra,” and Copilot will utilize the appropriate tool to fulfill the request. Additionally, the AI can generate music via its integration with the Suno music-generating platform, producing songs based on simple text prompts such as “Generate a song with a jazz rhythm.”
Moreover, Copilot supports a wide range of plug-ins for third-party applications and services. Examples include Instacart for meal planning, Kayak for trip organization, OpenTable for restaurant reservations, and Shopify. New plug-ins are added regularly to enhance functionality further. Another feature is Copilot Pages, an embeddable digital canvas where users can edit and share content produced by Copilot. For paying customers, BizChat offers a business-oriented hub that consolidates data from the web and work files to assist in creating project plans, meeting notes, and proposals.
Which Windows settings can Copilot control?
In Windows 11, Copilot acts as a digital concierge, capable of controlling specific settings and functions. Users can interact with it either by typing commands or utilizing Windows 11’s speech recognition features. For instance, Copilot can activate or deactivate the battery saver mode, display system information, launch live captions, show the device’s IP address, and empty the recycle bin.
A notable feature in Windows 11 is a toggle within the Copilot interface that switches between ‘Work’ and ‘Web’ modes. In ‘Work’ mode, Copilot’s Microsoft 365 functionalities are integrated into the Windows environment, enabling a seamless blending of productivity tools and system operations.
What is Copilot Pro?
Copilot Pro represents the premium version of Microsoft’s Copilot offerings, available for $20 per month. Subscribers receive priority access to advanced OpenAI models during peak periods and exclusive features like higher-resolution images from the Image Creator.
Additionally, Copilot Pro enhances the Microsoft 365 suite, integrating generative AI capabilities across applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and OneNote. It enables advanced functions like text writing, summarization, and editing within Word and OneNote. In Excel and PowerPoint, Copilot Pro can generate presentations and visualizations from natural language prompts, grounded in data from users’ files and templates.
Special features are on the horizon with Microsoft’s Copilot Wave 2 update. For instance, Copilot in PowerPoint will soon be able to pull images from a company’s SharePoint library, and Outlook will gain a “Prioritize my inbox” feature that offers insights on email interactions. Future updates will also allow users to teach Copilot about specific topics, keywords, and contacts, ensuring certain emails are marked high-priority. Advanced analytical capabilities in Excel will include formatting data, creating graphs, generating pivot tables, and guiding users through creating new formulas and macros.
What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?
Distinct from the consumer-focused Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot provides generative AI add-ons tailored for business applications within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Priced at $30 per user per month and available to customers with certain Microsoft 365 licenses, it offers advanced AI-driven features across a range of productivity apps.
Microsoft 365 Copilot stands out for its enterprise-grade data protection and the Semantic Index, which organizes an organization’s data and content for more personalized responses. Another significant addition is Microsoft 365 Chat, which pulls information from various Microsoft 365 apps to answer user questions. The business-oriented Copilot assists in generating web text, forms, chatbots, and image and site design themes. It also aids in creating email responses, managing supply chain processes, customer service queries, and security policies.
Noteworthy is that some Copilots are included with base software licenses, while others require additional fees. For example, Copilot for Sales and Copilot for Service cost extra without an active Microsoft 365 Copilot subscription.
Copilot Studio
Copilot Studio is a dashboard providing businesses the ability to integrate Microsoft 365 Copilot with their own or third-party data sources, such as customer relationship management software or enterprise resource management systems, through prebuilt or custom-built connectors. This platform also allows the creation and deployment of custom-tailored Copilots.
Businesses can design Copilots with specific datasets in mind, utilizing Copilot Studio to create guardrails for these AI agents. These custom agents can then be mentioned in Outlook and Teams, leveraging contextual knowledge to automate business workflows. Microsoft’s pre-built Copilot agents vary in their capacities, ranging from simple prompt-and-response bots to sophisticated agents capable of monitoring email inboxes and automating data entry tasks.
What is GitHub Copilot?
GitHub Copilot is a suite of AI tools designated for code generation and programming support. Available as an extension for development environments like Visual Studio Code and Visual Studio or in the cloud with GitHub Codespaces, GitHub Copilot aids developers by suggesting code snippets as they type.
The AI model behind GitHub Copilot has been trained on billions of lines of code across various programming languages, including Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Ruby. This extensive training allows it to offer real-time code suggestions, translating code into natural language descriptions and vice versa. GitHub Copilot’s functionality is further extended through Copilot Extensions, enabling developers to use third-party skills within their coding workflow.
Free for students, verified open-source contributors, and educators, GitHub Copilot costs $10 per month for individuals and $19 per month for business customers. Enterprise features are priced at $39 per user per month, which include added privacy features, license management, and organization-wide policy management. An innovative feature is Copilot Chat, a chatbot-like tool aware of the entire context of the code, capable of answering queries, fixing bugs, and addressing security issues.
In April, GitHub introduced Copilot Workspace, an AI-powered software engineering environment designed to assist with brainstorming, planning, building, testing, and running code using natural language commands.
Issues with Copilot
Despite its advanced capabilities, Copilot models are not without flaws. They can make mistakes by hallucinating incorrect summaries or answers to questions. This was notably observed in instances where Copilot for Teams meetings generated inaccurate attendee lists and topic summaries.
GitHub Copilot, on the other hand, has been reported to produce insecure coding patterns, outdated API references, and errors due to its training data. The suggested code may not always compile or run correctly. Security and privacy concerns are also significant, particularly concerning the unresolved fair-use questions surrounding the use of publicly available data for training AI models.
Microsoft offers some policies to protect customers from legal consequences arising from fair-use challenges, but ethical and legal questions persist. As customers become increasingly aware of how AI models are trained, these issues could impact the adoption of generative AI tools such as Copilot.
More Copilots
Microsoft’s Copilot suite extends beyond productivity and coding concepts to other domains. For instance, Copilot in Power Pages can generate text, forms, and chatbots for web pages. Copilot for Sales assists in email responses and meeting summaries, while Copilot in Microsoft Supply Chain Center flags potential disruptions.
The Service and Azure Copilots help with customer queries and app configurations respectively. For security, Copilot summarizes cyber threat intelligence, and in educational contexts, it aids data visualization and policy management. Team Copilot is particularly useful for managing meeting agendas and tasks across platforms like Teams, Loop, and Planner.
While some of these Copilots are baked into the base software licenses, others come with additional charges, making it essential for users to evaluate which tools provide the most value for their specific needs.
From boosting productivity in everyday tasks to assisting with complex business operations, Microsoft Copilot represents a significant leap in AI-driven solutions.
While challenges such as accuracy and ethical concerns remain, the breadth of capabilities offered by Copilot showcases the transformative potential of integrating AI into our daily workflows.
Source: Techcrunch