Microsoft unveiled its “super-powered” 365 Copilot at a Live virtual event

At it virtual event yesterday, Microsoft launched Microsoft 365 Copilot, the company’s latest push to integrate its suite of productivity and enterprise applications with artificial intelligence (AI). The event started at exactly 4 PM WAT with an opening statement by the company’s CEO Satya Nadella.

“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,” Nadella remarked. “With our new copilot for work, we’re giving people more agency and making technology more accessible through the most universal interface — natural language.”

He then handed over to the head of Microsoft 365 Jared Spataro and his team that took several presentation on the features and benefits of Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Microsoft 365 Copilot combines AI models, including OpenAI’s GPT-4, with business data and Microsoft 365 apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams. Currently being tested with select commercial customers, Copilot handles different tasks depending on the app in which it’s used.

For example, in Word, Copilot writes, edits, summarises and generates text, while in PowerPoint and Excel, Copilot turns natural language commands into designed presentations and data visualisations. In Outlook, Copilot can help manage inboxes, draft responses and identify action items, while in Teams, it provides real-time summaries and action items, such as creating meeting agendas.

In addition, Copilot includes Business Chat, which summarises chats, writes emails, finds key dates, or writes a plan based on other project files. Specifics on pricing and licensing will be shared soon, according to Microsoft.

Despite Copilot’s power, it can get things wrong, so Microsoft highlights the “grounding” that Copilot uses to improve the quality of the prompts it’s given. Spataro explained that prompts fed to Copilot are first filtered through the Microsoft Graph, Microsoft’s unified data API, for additional context.

These modified prompts are then sent to GPT-4, and the responses are filtered back through the Microsoft Graph for safety, security, and compliance checks before being sent back to Microsoft 365 apps.

Microsoft 365 Copilot follows the rollout of Copilot in Dynamics 365, and both demonstrate that the company is heavily investing in AI and automation.

Innovation Village reported early this year that Microsoft invested billions more in OpenAI, the startup developing the technologies behind the various incarnations of Copilot, and the tech giant is evidently eager to see returns on investment.

The company is also striving to maintain a competitive edge against its rival Google. Recently, Google announced a comprehensive update to its productivity and collaboration tool suite, Workspace, which incorporates generative AI into almost every aspect of the software.

Both Microsoft and Google appear to have rushed their rollouts of new AI-powered features. In Google’s announcement, it was revealed that the Workspace features would only be available to trusted testers upon launch, with no pricing information currently available.

Similarly, Microsoft’s aggressive approach to AI development has led to a shortage of server hardware, specifically GPUs, as reported by The Information. This has resulted in Microsoft rationing access to the hardware for some internal teams to ensure that there is enough capacity to handle the development of both Bing’s new GPT-4 powered chatbot and the newly-announced Microsoft 365 Copilot tools.