Tech

Microsoft Unveils Co-pilot, AI tool powered by GPT-4

Published

6 months ago

March 17, 2023

Microsoft has unveiled a new Artificial Intelligence tool powered by GPT-4 from OpenAI called Copilot for its Microsoft 365 apps and services.

The company, which announced the product on its website on Thursday stated that the AI-powered Copilot is designed to improve productivity by assisting users with generating documents, emails, presentations, and much more.

“Today, we are bringing the power of next-generation AI to work. Introducing Microsoft 365 Copilot — your copilot for work. It combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet,” the company announced on its website.

The Copilot, powered by GPT-4 from OpenAI, “is integrated into Microsoft 365 in two ways. It works alongside you, embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more — to unleash creativity, unlock productivity and uplevel skills,” Microsoft said,

Satya Nadella, the Chairman and CEO, Microsoft, was quoted as saying, “Today marks the next major step in the evolution of how we interact with computing, which will fundamentally change the way we work and unlock a new wave of productivity growth. With our new Copilot for work, we’re giving people more agency and making technology more accessible through the most universal interface — natural language.

The company added, “Today we’re also announcing an entirely new experience: Business Chat. Business Chat works across the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and your data — your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings and contacts — to do things you’ve never been able to do before. You can give it natural language prompts like ‘Tell my team how we updated the product strategy,” and it will generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails and chat threads.’”

According to Microsoft, the Microsoft 365 Copilot will transform work in three ways: unleash creativity, unlock productivity and up-level skills.

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“Unleash creativity. With Copilot in Word, you can jump-start the creative process so you never start with a blank slate again. Copilot gives you a first draft to edit and iterate on — saving hours in writing, sourcing, and editing time.”

Microsoft added, “Sometimes Copilot will be right, other times usefully wrong — but it will always put you further ahead. You’re always in control as the author, driving your unique ideas forward, prompting Copilot to shorten, rewrite or give feedback. Copilot in PowerPoint helps you create beautiful presentations with a simple prompt, adding relevant content from a document you made last week or last year. And with Copilot in Excel, you can analyse trends and create professional-looking data visualizations in seconds.

“Copilot will fundamentally change how people work with AI and how AI works with people. As with any new pattern of work, there’s a learning curve — but those who embrace this new way of working will quickly gain an edge,” Microsoft stated.