Microsoft 365 Copilot

During the ‘Reinventing productivity with AI’ online event, Microsoft today revealed the new Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI copilot for your productivity needs. Microsoft 365 Copilot will be available across Microsoft 365 apps including Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook.

You can ask Copilot to help you prepare for your upcoming meeting, draft Word documents on any topic and you can also suggest the input document as reference, create PowerPoint presentations based on text documents, analyze the data available on Excel, generate responses to email in Outlook, catch up with Teams meetings with text summaries and more.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Word

Microsoft Word:

  • Writes, edits, summarizes, and creates right alongside you. With only a brief prompt, Copilot in Word will create a first draft for you, bringing in information from across your organization as needed. Copilot can add content to existing documents, summarize text, and rewrite sections or the entire document to make it more concise. You can even get suggested tones—from professional to passionate and casual to thankful—to help you strike the right note. Copilot can also help you improve your writing with suggestions that strengthen your arguments or smooth inconsistencies

Microsoft Excel:

  • Works alongside you to help analyze and explore your data. Ask Copilot questions about your data set in natural language, not just formulas. It will reveal correlations, propose what-if scenarios, and suggest new formulas based on your questions—generating models based on your questions that help you explore your data without modifying it. Identify trends, create powerful visualizations, or ask for recommendations to drive different outcomes.

Microsoft PowerPoint:

  • Helps you turn your ideas into stunning presentations. As your storytelling partner, Copilot can transform existing written documents into decks complete with speaker notes and sources or start a new presentation from a simple prompt or outline. Condense lengthy presentations at the click of a button and use natural language commands to adjust layouts, reformat text, and perfectly time animations. Here are some example commands and prompts you can try:

Microsoft Outlook:

  • Works with you in your inbox and messages so that you can spend less time on email triage and more time on communicating—better, faster, and more easily. Summarize lengthy, convoluted email threads with multiple people to understand not only what has been said, but the different viewpoints of each person and the open questions that have yet to be answered. Respond to an existing email with a simple prompt or turn quick notes into crisp, professional messages—pulling from other emails or content that you already have access to from across Microsoft 365. Use toggles to adjust the tone or length of your note.

Microsoft Teams:

  • Copilot helps you run more effective meetings, get up to speed on the conversation, organize key discussion points, and summarize key actions so that the entire group knows what to do next. In your chat, Copilot gets you answers to specific questions or catches you up on anything you’ve missed, all without interrupting the flow of discussion. By adding Copilot to your meetings and conversations, you now also have a powerful tool to help with common tasks such as creating meeting agendas based on chat history, identifying the right people for follow-ups, and scheduling the next check-in.

Microsoft is currently testing Microsoft 365 Copilot with 20 customers, including 8 in Fortune 500 enterprises. Microsoft will expand these previews to customers more broadly in the coming months.

On a related note, Google announced a similar set of features for its Google Workspace productivity suite. Google announced new generative AI experiences in Workspace apps including Gmail, Docs, Slides, Sheets, Meet, and Chat. You can read about it here.

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