Microsoft 365 gets a copilot

Human copilot. © iStock.

Microsoft owns GitHub, whose Copilot function assists developers in coding more quickly. Microsoft is now applying a similar function more globally to most Microsoft 365 applications. The assistant, also called Copilot, will help users generate documents, emails, presentations, and much more. Powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4, it will ride along in the sidebar as a chatbot that Office users can call on to write text in documents, create PowerPoint decks based on Word docs, and even manipulate Excel pivot tables.

Shortly after introducing its AI-driven chatbot in Bing, Microsoft is quickly moving to integrate OpenAI’s large language models into its applications. Microsoft’s news release comes just a few days after Google announced similar functionalities in Google Workspace, such as AI-assisted text creation for Gmail and Docs.

⇨ The Verge, Tom Warren, “Microsoft announces Copilot: the AI-powered future of Office documents.”

2023-03-16