What is Microsoft 365 Copilot? The AI coming to Word, Excel, and more

Microsoft has dominated the tech news cycle in recent months, thanks to its $10 billion investment in ChatGPT creator OpenAI and a flurry of new releases like Bing Chat. The Redmond giant isn’t stopping there either as it’s now poised to roll out a new AI-powered assistant in its office suite. Dubbed Microsoft 365 Copilot, the feature will automate tasks like writing emails, summarizing meetings, and even making beautiful PowerPoint presentations. All of this may sound too good to be true, but Microsoft’s early demos look promising.

So in this article, let’s take a closer look at Microsoft 365 Copilot, what it can do, and how you can use it.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is a new generative AI feature that assists with work tasks like writing documents, editing spreadsheets, and summarizing meetings. You’ll find it within various Microsoft 365 apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

For context, here’s a quick rundown of Microsoft 365 Copilot’s capabilities:

• Copilot can write entire documents based on a short prompt. For example, you could say “Draft a cover letter for the role of a senior software developer”.
• In PowerPoint, Copilot can help reduce the amount of text in slides, add AI-generated images, and reduce a long presentation to a handful of slides.
• When you’re dealing with large amounts of data in Excel, you could ask Copilot to quickly analyze it and create an easily-digestible visualization.
• If your workplace uses Microsoft Teams, you can ask Copilot to summarize a meeting, catch up on unread chats, and even ask about individual team members.
• In Microsoft’s email app Outlook, you can rely on Copilot to tailor your writing to sound professional, friendly, or a specific tone of your choice. You can also ask the AI to write a draft, eliminating all of the hard work.
• For digital note-takers, Microsoft has also integrated Copilot into OneNote and Loop. You can think of this integration as a virtual assistant that you can ask to quickly sort, search, and summarize your notes.

Besides these isolated examples, Microsoft has also developed Copilot to work seamlessly across the entire app suite. So for example, you could create a new Word document and ask Copilot to draft a report based on a different Excel file. Likewise, you’ll be able to ask Copilot to bring notes from Microsoft Teams into OneNote and summarize the text before adding it to a note.

If the concept of Microsoft 365 Copilot sounds familiar, that’s because Google already has a competing feature called Duet AI for Workspace. However, it’s not as fully featured as the examples we’ve seen from Microsoft so far. Things may improve in the future, but as it stands, here’s a quick comparison between Google and Microsoft’s AI-powered productivity features:

While Microsoft 365 Copilot seems extremely promising on paper, the company hasn’t opened up access to it just yet. It first announced the feature in March 2023 but didn’t commit to a concrete release date at the time. Fast forward a few months later and Microsoft has only just started rolling out the feature to a closed group of trusted testers. We saw Google adopt a similar strategy in the early days of its generative AI feature too.

So far, the company has announced the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program. However, unlike the Bing Chat waitlist or Google’s Bard chatbot that slowly rolled out, Microsoft isn’t letting anyone from the general public sign up to access Copilot. Instead, it’s an invitation-only program for an exclusive group of 600 paying customers. That’s right — you and I can’t simply sign up to use Microsoft 365 Copilot for free.

At this point, it’s unclear if Microsoft 365 Copilot will ever become free to use. But based on the company’s aggressive AI push with its chatbot and Bing Image Creator, it may happen. Microsoft also faces some competition from Google, where anyone can freely join a waitlist to access generative AI in Google Search, Gmail and Docs right now.

On the flip side, however, Microsoft’s AI features cost money to operate. Large language models, especially advanced ones like GPT-4, consume lots of computing resources. So from that perspective, it’s easy to see why you may need a Microsoft 365 subscription to use Copilot.

Can I join the Microsoft 365 Copilot Early Access Program?

Unlike Bing Chat, Microsoft’s 365 Copilot Early Access Program is closed to the general public. The feature is only available to a select number (around 600 as of August 2023) of trusted testers. This means you cannot sign up to test Copilot.

On paper, Microsoft 365 Copilot is an exciting prospect for office workers. In brief, Copilot can be viewed as a more extensive and capable version of Microsoft’s original Office helper, Clippy. But unlike Clippy’s severely limited feature kit, Copilot uses generative AI to assist users with documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and more.

Here’s a brief look at what Copilot brings to some of the 365 products:

• Outlook: Microsoft notes that Copilot can help users manage their inboxes more efficiently. More specifically, it claims it’ll allow you to clear your inbox “in minutes, not hours.”
• Excel: Based on preview videos, you can ask Copilot to analyze data in spreadsheets to seek out trends, and create visualizations of said data.
• PowerPoint: Create presentations based on a prompt. For instance, users can create an entire slideshow by referring to details in a product guide.
• Word: Word makes full use of Copilot’s GPT-4 roots. Microsoft notes that you can create first drafts using a prompt, which could save hours. Users can then accept the draft, modify it, and more.

Microsoft is also rolling out Copilot in the form of Business Chat, which works across the umbrella of 365 apps.

Microsoft 365 Copilot is not free, and it’s unclear if a free tier will ever be available.

When Copilot launches, those looking to adopt Microsoft’s new AI Office future must spend $30 per user per month. Notably, that’s more expensive than the Microsoft 365 Business Premium tier, which demands $22 per user monthly.

Copilot will be available through Microsoft 365’s Enterprise-level E3 and E5 tiers, alongside Business Standard and Business Premium offerings.

Notably, the Copilot moniker is coming to other Microsoft properties in the future. The company has rolled out Windows Copilot — a similar feature built into Windows 11. The feature effectively doubles as a system manager, and allows users to open files, control apps, and adjust system settings. Announced in June 2023, the feature debuted on Windows 11 in a September 26, 2023, update.