Imagine a software program smart enough to draft your emails, analyze financial reports, and even take notes for a meeting you couldn’t attend. That’s what Microsoft claims it’s created with a new feature coming to the company’s Office apps.
On Thursday, the company introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot, which promises to take “the drudgery” out of everyday office work. The system uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT technology and integrates it with the Microsoft 365 apps, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more.
In the apps, Copilot will appear as a text box, where you can ask the technology to complete a task through a simple prompt. The system can then take information across your Microsoft 365 accounts, such as past emails, notes, and corporate documents, to come up with a response.
During the presentation, Microsoft showed that Copilot can complete various requests in seconds when it would normally take a human worker half an hour or more to do so. For example, the technology was able to write an email in Outlook to invite friends to a high school graduation party. Then in PowerPoint, Copilot created a presentation to celebrate the high school student by taking photos from the user’s OneDrive account.
In another demo, Microsoft showed Copilot generating a business proposal in Word based on the user’s past documents. The technology could then be instructed to add a short summary at the top of the proposal, along with an FAQ at the end. Finally, Copilot could translate the business proposal into a PowerPoint presentation.
Meanwhile, in Excel, Copilot analyzed the data and gave summaries on key trends, before creating additional graphs outlining various business scenarios.
The other way Copilot can act as a helpful assistant involves online meetings. In Teams, the system can attend a meeting for you, creating a transcript and notes of the key points. The user can then ask Copilot follow-up questions for more context.
“This new era of computing will usher in a whole new way of working,” said Microsoft Corporate Vice President Jared Spataro during the event. The company’s announcement goes on to list various other ways Copilot can be used to streamline work. However, the company plans on taking its time to launch Copilot to users.
During the presentation, Microsoft executives said they’re making the technology first available to a “small number of customers,” before a wider rollout in the months ahead. The big challenge facing the company is keeping Copilot error-free. It’s not hard to imagine the technology making a mistake on a generated financial report or presentation that could be disastrous if the document isn’t vetted beforehand.
But even so, Microsoft says Copilot promises to drastically improve the way people work by allowing employees to focus more on productive and creative tasks while Copilot handles the more time-sucking duties.
“Sometimes Copilot will get it right. Other times it will be usefully wrong, giving you an idea that’s not perfect, but still gives you a head start,” Spataro said. Microsoft plans on sharing more about pricing and licensing for Copilot soon.