Copilot, AI-powered automation for Office applications, is now available in Microsoft 365

Microsoft has unveiled Copilot, an artificial intelligence-powered solution for Microsoft 365 that uses text prompts to produce content in Office apps.

It integrates big language models with user data from the Microsoft Graph and Microsoft 365 apps, such as calendars, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more.

The feature was introduced during the company’s Future of Work event on Thursday, March 16, 2023.

Users may instruct PowerPoint to generate presentations from Word documents, for example, and to add animations or styles to all slides.

That also applies to other apps. Users, for example, can instruct Microsoft Word to create plans or proposals based on data in an Excel spreadsheet.

Microsoft Outlook can summarise emails and write responses, while Microsoft Teams can give meeting summaries and emphasise key topics in the discussion.

In addition, the business developed a Business Chat tool that connects data from several applications to summarise conversations, emails, and documents, track project progress, and produce planning overviews.

Microsoft Copilot 365 is now under testing with 20 commercial clients, and the tech giant wants to push it out to additional users in the “coming months”.

The capability is powered by the same OpenAI GPT-4 model that powers Microsoft’s updated Bing search, which is now available to everyone.