Microsoft’s AI leverages the capabilities of OpenAI’s GPT-4. Here’s everything you need to know, including each Copilot’s functionality.
If you could call 2023 a year of something connected with tech space, it would surely be the year of AI. Following the meteoric rise of ChatGPT and its various offshoots, all the tech giants started developing AI-based solutions for their services, and this year we've seen them implemented everywhere. Meta got its hand in the game and introduced AI into Facebook Messenger, Google came out with Bard, and various other tech companies utilized artificial intelligence to make their services better and more user-friendly.
One of the companies that went all-in on AI is Microsoft. However, it has a bit of a leg up. It's been working closely with OpenAI to create various artificial intelligence tools to help improve our lives. The company, after introducing a great Ai-powered productivity tool called Loop, is going much further now and integrating AI into its search engine, the Edge browser, Microsoft 365 and Windows 11 as well.
Some of the features that Microsoft unveiled during Microsoft Ignite are completely new, but some of them you might already know by a different name. We're here to help guide you through all the features on offer and what Microsoft's AI can do for you.
The name Microsoft Copilot has been thrown around for some time now, but every time it seems to mean something a bit different. Let's just break it down and see what exactly hides behind this marketing slogan.
First, there is the Copilot brand. Microsoft is rebranding all of its AI-powered companions as Copilot, adding specialized monikers to each of them. Therefore, a Copilot is an AI companion that is baked into Microsoft services, allowing you to use it as a helping hand when working or creating. There are already a bunch of these Copilots, and Microsoft wants to create more specialized versions for the most important apps in its portfolio.
However, there is also the Microsoft Copilot, which is one of these specialized Copilots. Interestingly enough, this feature is one of the oldest AI powered assistants in Microsoft's portfolio, but it was previously known as Bing Chat (or earlier Bing AI), and was renamed to Microsoft Copilot just a few weeks ago. It's an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT, and useful when searching for some specialized info, writing code and doing all the cool stuff that you can do with these Ai companions.
Well, yes – Microsoft Copilot is just a renamed Bing Chat, which in turn was a renamed Bing AI. Microsoft has decided to unify all of its AI assistants under a common name of Copilot, so that the whole ecosystem of AI companions is more consistent across many of the companies' utilities.
Of course, it was not just a simple rebranding, as Microsoft Copilot also introduced some new features with the release of this new version – such as support for the new GPT-4 Turbo model. This means your interactions with the chatbot should be even better, its responses more precise and life-like, and hopefully – much more helpful.
Microsoft is steadily rolling out its Copilot companions to many of its apps. It all started with the Bing AI, so what is now called the Microsoft Companion – it was released in February 2023 only to be rebranded in November 2023.
However, the company also has many more types of AI in store for different kind of uses and clients. Its new Loop app uses AI to help facilitate working together, there are also different Copilots for enterprise users, as well as one baked into Windows 11.
Here are some of the release dates of Copilots:
In 2019 Microsoft started a multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI. Shortly after we started seeing OpenAI producing interesting things like the incredible image generation tool DALL-E 2 and the now popular ChatGPT.
The latter of these two is an intelligent AI-driven chat tool that's able to have human-like conversations, answer questions, suggest ideas and assist you with all sorts of different tasks. It is an artificial intelligence that has been trained on a large language model and a large multimodal model. This means it's been trained on large datasets and with human interactions, but hasn't had access to search the web.
Things are moving fast though and OpenAI is constantly working to improve its toolset. Since ChatGPT 4 appeared the AI has been making waves by doing all sorts of things including composing essays, writing code, suggesting business ideas and more besides. Even passing the bar exam.
In February 2023, Microsoft revealed that it was using ChatGPT to power "the new Bing" integrating next-generation artificial intelligence into Bing search.
With the power of AI, Bing – or what is now called the Microsoft Copilot – is now more than just a search engine because it's also a conversational tool and one that Microsoft is calling your "AI Copilot for the web". With these new tools, it is set to "deliver better search, more complete answers, a new chat experience and the ability to generate content. "
In March 2023 Microsoft started integrating its AI-powered Bing search into Microsoft Edge. The company began rolling out stable versions of the browser with the Bing AI chatbot built right into the sidebar as standard.
Referred to as “Edge Copilot", "Bing chat" and "Discover" this tool now sees you being able to get answers directly from your browser with the power of your own AI assistant.
Microsoft says that Edge Copilot can do things like summarizing web content, searching the web for answers and even creating content for you.
Microsoft notes that Bing AI isn't perfect (yet) and won't always be 100 percent factual:
"Bing aims to base all its responses on reliable sources, but AI can make mistakes, and third-party content on the internet may not always be accurate or reliable. Bing will sometimes misrepresent the information it finds, and you may see responses that sound convincing but are incomplete, inaccurate or inappropriate. Use your own judgment and double-check the facts before making decisions or taking action based on Bing’s responses."
Microsoft isn't stopping at just Bing and Edge with AI, it's also integrating the intelligence into Microsoft 365 as well.
Known as "Copilot" this is a tool to help people with creating documents, reading and summarizing emails, crafting presentations and more besides.
Think of it as a much more intelligent (and actually useful) alternative to the classic Microsoft Office assistant Clippy.
Copilot can be used throughout Microsoft's Office suite. It will be there to help you in Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Powerpoint and Word. So whether you need help managing a PivotTable in Excel or keeping on top of your inbox, Copilot will be there to help you out.
Microsoft has shown off some of the powerful functions of Copilot and what it can do. This includes helpful things like quickly summarizing long email threads or analysing great swathes of spreadsheet data.
One of the most powerful demos of what Microsoft Copilot can do is demonstrated with Copilot being used in Excel.
You can use this AI tool to analyze your data and then do things like look for trends in particular data sets, create new sheets and graphs based on it and even explain its workings and how it came to those findings.
This is obviously a potentially powerful tool for assessing company data but also could be a big time saver for many.
Copilot has different uses in several of the Microsoft365 apps:
Microsoft 365 Copilot is still in the early stages, but on 1 November it finally started a rollout to Microsoft's enterprise customers. This unfortunately means that it's still not available for casual users of Microsoft's office suite, and the company only says that it'll be available to consumers at a later date.
At its Build event in May 2023, Microsoft introduced Windows Copilot. Which is essentially the same thing, but built directly into Windows 11.
With Windows Copilot, you can open up a chat window directly from the desktop and ask Copilot to help you with tasks, or get information, just like like Bing Chat.
The difference here is that it's built directly into the operating system, so it has access to system controls and documents, as well as the ability to open and control applications.
Microsoft's demo showed Windows Copilot setting the system to dark mode, snapping windows into place and summarizing a business plan document. It's even able to recommend music, open Spotify and begin playing it.
A lot of Microsoft's Build presentation focused on plugins and how third-party developers can integrate with Windows Copilot, so we'd expect the AI's capabilities to expand as the platform matures. Currently, Microsoft says that 50 plugins are available, and thousands more are on the way.
Windows Copilot launched in beta in June 2023 as part of the Windows 11 Insider preview, and was finally delivered to Windows 11 users on 26 September via a Windows Update.
By subscribing, you agree to our Privacy Policy and may receive occasional deal communications; you can unsubscribe anytime.
Adrian has a BA in English Studies and an MA in Philosophy and Contemporary Critical Theory. He has been writing about technology for a few years now, working both in Poland and with English-speaking publications, such as PCWorld, TechAdvisor and now Pocket Lint.
He is particularly interested in sustainable tech, loving all things second-hand, but also enjoys writing all kinds of guides, how-tos and comparisons. When not working, he is doing a Ph.D. in Philosophy — so basically some more work. Whether you want to talk phones, aesthetics or critical theory, he’s glad to have a chat!
Leave a Reply