This Thursday (16), Microsoft introduced Copilot, a tool with artificial intelligence that will help you compose emails, presentations, spreadsheets, documents and more. The resource is powered by the GPT-4 model, presented on Tuesday (14), and will accompany the user while working in Microsoft 365 programs, such as Word, PowerPoint e Excel.
Copilot will appear in a sidebar of every program where it is available, something similar to the Bing interface in Microsoft Edge. From it, users must request activities for the AI via chat, as they do in ChatGPT, whether to create an initial draft of text, slides for presentations based on documents in Word or spreadsheets and graphs in Excel.
“It works alongside you, built into the apps millions of people use every day: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more,” said Microsoft 365 head Jared Spataro. “Copilot is a whole new way of working,” he added.
assistant for everything
In task organization, the AI can take responsibility for providing information about a given meeting (if available, of course) and preparing the guests with the topics of the conversation. In addition, the model will also be able to let newly hired employees or those who have just returned from vacation aware of everything that is happening in the firm.
As it is based on a chatbot, the possibilities of using Copilot are practically unlimited. You can ask the AI to generate a ten-slide presentation based on information from a given Word document, or ask it to create a chart or pivot table based on Excel data.
Copilot will also be present in Outlook to help with routine email management. Users will be able to use AI to summarize incoming messages and create quick responses based on the content of a conversation.
Or Copilot system
The head of the MS suite pointed out that Copilot is not “a simple connection between ChatGPT and Microsoft 365”. According to him, the system is powered by the so-called “Copilot System” (or “Copilot System”, in free translation), which brings together the ecosystem’s programs (Word and Excel, for example) with the Microsoft Graph (ecosystem data cluster). and the intelligence of GPT-4.
Thus, AI is able to have a broad view of the context to deliver better results. If the user requests the creation of a document in Word, Copilot will make calls to Microsoft Graph to extract the context of the request and then bridge it with GPT-4. After that, the process goes back to the Graph for a final check of information and security confirmations.
Review is always important
AI can be a hand in the wheel when starting projects, especially in the corporate world, but it cannot be solely responsible for the content. According to Microsoft, it is important for users to review the material produced by the AI, as it may not always be right.
“Sometimes Copilot gets it right, sometimes it doesn’t. So it gives the idea that it’s not perfect, but it still serves as a kickoff”, punctuated Spataro.
Availability and plans
Microsoft’s plans also include the launch of a Corporate Chat tool. The function will be integrated into the entire suite of the company and data linked to it and, similarly to Copilot, will serve to prepare documents, presentations and spreadsheets, but all in an interface integrated with Microsoft Teams.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is currently in trial with 20 customers, and testing will expand to more customers in the coming months. For now, Microsoft has not given information about the price of the program with AI, but said it will reveal more details in the future.
