Copilot – BIG

Microsoft has announced plans to add the new Microsoft 365 Copilot AI assistant to its OneNote software.

The company initially publicized its plans to implement Copilot for other apps such as Word, Excel, Teams and PowerPoint in March 2022. Now, OneNote is expected to join the lineup and show off what the AI-powered assistant is capable of.

“As your notetaking partner, Copilot uses your prompts to draft plans, generate ideas, create lists, organize information, and more,” said Greg Mace, a product manager for OneNote.

Users can also ask the AI to create event plans and generate talking points for upcoming meetings. Sounds pretty good right?

currently playing around with Microsoft's AI Copilot for Word, thanks to @XenoPanther. It's only supposed to be available in “private preview” for “select Microsoft 365 enterprise customers,” but a few registry keys here and there and you can get the basics working 👀 pic.twitter.com/TSO1KgnqwH

— Tom Warren (@tomwarren) March 28, 2023

Microsoft hasn’t shown Copilot in practice within OneNote yet. If it operates similarly to how it does in Word, users will be able to highlight paragraphs and Copilot will offer up rewritten text automatically.

The tech giant has not revealed an official date for Copilots launch in OneNote, however, a small number of Microsoft 365 customers are currently testing preview versions in apps like Outlook and Word.

For now, Microsoft users will have to wait for the company to iron out all of the wrinkles before the official launch.

Source: Microsoft Via: The Verge

Microsoft unveiled its AI-powered ‘Copilot’ for Microsoft 365 apps at an event on March 16th. Copilot will exist as an assistant with Microsoft’s apps like Word and Excel.

“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,” wrote Microsoft’s corporate vice president of modern work and business applications, Jared Spataro, in a blog post.

Users can summon Copilot to handle a variety of tasks, such as providing information about an upcoming Teams meeting or creating a 10-slide PowerPoint presentation based on a Word document. Per Microsoft’s blog, here are some of the things Copilot can do in:

Word – Copilot can help you draft and edit documents
PowerPoint – Copilot helps make presentations form a simple prompt
Excel – Copilot can analyze trends and make visualizations
Outlook – Copilot can help “clear out your inbox minutes”
Teams – Copilot can summarize key discussion points, including who said what and suggest action items
And more…

Microsoft stressed that users are “always in control” when using Copilot and can decide what to keep, modify, or discard. In the blog, Spataro was also quick to say that Copilot will get things wrong but promised it will “always put you further ahead.”

Copilot leverages OpenAI’s GPT-4, though Spataro wrote that Microsoft did more than just embed it in Microsoft 365. Copilot combines “the power of LLMs, including GPT-4, with the Microsoft 365 apps and your business data in the Microsoft Graph.”

Along with Copilot, Microsoft announced ‘Business Chat’ will work across all the Microsoft 365 apps and data, leveraging the company’s ‘Graph’ to bring everything into a single chat interface.

These new features and changes sound ambitious, and it remains to be seen how well they work in the real world. Moreover, there remain many legitimate concerns about AI — Microsoft’s rush to integrate AI into products doesn’t help, especially as the company shutters teams dedicated to responsible AI.

That said, Copilot won’t be available immediately. In the blog post, Spataro said the company will share more about pricing and details “in the coming months.”

Images credit: Microsoft

Source: Microsoft Via: The Verge