Microsoft 365 Copilot for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Teams Announced: All Details

Microsoft on Thursday announced Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI-powered upgrade for the company’s productivity apps. The Redmond firm says it uses large language models, user data in Microsoft Graph, and the company’s applications to power the new Copilot features. Users will be able to access the AI-backed features in these apps to quickly generate documents, spreadsheets, presentations, draft emails, or coordinate meetings and quickly surface relevant content on Microsoft Teams. The company also says Copilot can be right or “usefully wrong” during regular use.

During the company’s Microsoft 365 AI event on Thursday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that the new Microsoft 365 Copilot is coming to Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and other productivity applications. Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President, said that the company didn’t “simply integrate ChatGPT” with its apps. Instead, it uses a Copilot System that uses a combination of the company’s apps, the data stored in your Microsoft account (like your email and photos), and a large language model.

Microsoft conducted a comprehensive demonstration of the various functionality that will come to that will come too its apps for word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, and meetings. These included quickly generating a presentation to celebrate an event like a family member graduating, using personalised images and messages. Copilot can also draft emails for you based on natural language commands, or quickly generate a draft of a document and rewrite it in your own writing style.

Meetings on Microsoft Teams will also benefit from Copilot integration, according to Microsoft. This means that users will be able to access summaries of meeting in real time, or ask Copilot to to help them sort through several messages on the messaging app. 

Microsoft also announced a new feature called Business Chat, a tightly integrated system that it says draws data and information from a variety of sources, including documents, presentations, email, calendar, notes, and contacts. The new Business Chat feature will allow users to generate emails, find information in your Microsoft account quickly, generate plans or a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis with a single command.