Grant Lewis is an Software Engineer with ThreeWill. Grant’s consulting experience consists of using Microsoft technologies to enhance business operations in a manufacturing environment.
Microsoft has promised that AI will revolutionize work and they are utilizing their investment in OpenAI to quickly roll out AI throughout all their product offerings. They are calling these AI powered assistants “Copilots.” On the surface, this name makes sense, however using this one name for multiple products can cause some confusion. With this post, I am hoping to shed some light on the various products that Microsoft offers under the banner of Copilot.
Note: some copilots require premium licensing.
Copilot for Microsoft 365
This copilot integrates the power of Chat-GPT directly into the Office applications that you know and love such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Like Chat-GPT, you can prompt for what you want with plain-text and Copilot will attempt to perform the requested action. Notably, Copilot for M365 has access to other documents stored in M365 and you can include these documents as part of your prompt.
Examples Include:
- Edit or summarize a Word document, or even draft whole paragraphs or entire documents based on information in other M365 files.
- Analyze and summarize data in Excel with natural language.
- Build slides and even entire presentations in PowerPoint based on an existing M365 files.
- Summarize emails, draft responses, and create meetings in Outlook.
The M365 suite of applications are some of the most used applications in the world, and consequently Copilot for M365 has tremendous potential to gain efficiency in everyday tasks.
Visit the following link for more information on Copilot for Microsoft 365: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/blog/2023/03/16/introducing-microsoft-365-copilot-a-whole-new-way-to-work/
Copilot in the Power Platform
The Power Platform is Microsoft’s low-code/no-code solution to empower workers to create powerful custom applications and automations regardless of technical background and expertise. However, even though the entry point is lower, these can still be intimidating tools for some users. Copilot attempts to give users a Chat-GPT powered assistant to help build these applications.
- Copilot in Power Apps allows a user to describe the application they are attempting to create and the data they wish to interact with in natural language. Copilot will create the application and can be used to refine it too.
- Copilot in Power Automate allows a user to describe a business process and Copilot will attempt to create a Power Automate Flow to automate the process.
- Copilot in Power Virtual Agents allows a user to build and refine the topics they want a bot to perform.
The Power Platform is much newer than the Microsoft 365 suite of applications, however Microsoft clearly sees these as some of their most important offerings for corporations, democratizing the ability to create custom applications and automations. Copilot further reduces the barrier for makers to add efficiency to their business processes.
Visit the following link for more information on Copilot in the Power Platform: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/power-platform/blog/2023/03/16/power-platform-is-leading-a-new-era-of-ai-generated-low-code-app-development/
Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat)
Adding confusion to the naming, Microsoft has renamed Bing Chat to Copilot, and created a new mobile version for iOS and Android called Microsoft Copilot.
Microsoft refers to what was formerly called Bing Chat as the copilot for the web. Copilot is one of the most accessible AIs on the market today; It is built into Microsoft’s Edge browser and Bing search engine. Copilot is notable for having access to real-time information and using Chat-GPT4 and DALL-E 3, all of which require a subscription from OpenAI. However, as a chatbot Copilot does not seem as powerful as Chat-GPT, offering more concise responses as might be expected from its roots as a search engine enhancement. On the other hand, it does provide sources for its responses, which can help verify responses and detect hallucinations.
When using Copilot with a work account, the chat will employ commercial data protection and Microsoft guarantees that no data from your chat will be saved or accessible outside of your organization.
I have already discussed my experiences with Bing Chat in a previous post. Visit the following link for more information on Copilot: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bing/chat/enterprise/
Copilot in Windows
Copilot in Windows is an AI assistant built into the Windows operating system. Much like Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat), Copilot in Windows can be used conversationally and to generate content, however it can also be used to perform a variety of tasks related to your computer, such as organize windows and change settings.
Visit the following link for more information on Copilot in Windows: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/copilot-ai-features
GitHub Copilot
Microsoft refers to GitHub Copilot as an AI pair programmer for software developers, a large language model that has been trained extensively on code. GitHub copilot is an extension that lives directly in your editor, which improves focus and efficiency by allowing the user to get AI generated feedback without changing windows. Using either code comments or prompts, GitHub copilot can suggest code snippets or create documentation. An available chat interface lets a programmer ask targeted questions about code and get help addressing errors and bugs.
Visit the following link for more information on GitHub Copilot: https://github.com/features/copilot
Other Copilots
There are many more copilots available that are either specific to a target audience or are still upcoming and are out of the scope of this post. These include:
Copilot for Sales
AI for CRM (Customer Relationship Management) applications
Copilot for Service
AI for customized customer interactions
Microsoft Security Copilot
AI cybersecurity solution
Copilot in Microsoft Viva
AI for employee engagement
Copilot for Azure
AI for managing Azure operations
Additionally, Microsoft even offers Copilot Studio for generating custom copilots.
Summary
At the most recent Microsoft Ignite, Microsoft referred to the present as the Age of Copilots. It is evident from the number of AI powered product offerings and the speed that they are introducing them that they are serious about that.
Hopefully, this guide is a useful introduction to the different AI tools that Microsoft offers. The promises of AI are extraordinary; however, it is up to you to find the best fit for these tools in your daily workflow. Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today if you want to find out whether and how AI can benefit you, your staff, or your company!
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