Journey to the World of Artificial Intelligence-1: Getting Started with Microsoft Co-Pilot

What is Microsoft Copilot?

Microsoft Copilot is an artificial intelligence (AI) assistant developed by Microsoft. It works with Microsoft 365 applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams to help users perform writing, editing and productivity tasks more easily and efficiently. Microsoft Copilot is trained on a large dataset of text and code. This dataset includes text from books, articles, websites, and code repositories. Using this dataset, Microsoft Copilot has the ability to understand the context of the text that users type and provide appropriate suggestions.

How does Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 work?

The Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 features that users see in Microsoft 365 Apps and other surfaces appear as intelligent features, functions, and prompting capabilities. Our core LLMs (recognise, translate, summarise and infer text and other content formats) and Microsoft proprietary technologies work together in a core system that helps us securely access, use and manage our organisational data.

Features of Microsoft Copilot

Auto-completion: Copilot speeds up the typing process by automatically completing the text that users type.

Corrections: Copilot detects grammatical and spelling errors in users' typed text and suggests corrections.

Suggestions: Copilot provides suggestions to help users make their text more engaging and informative. Microsoft Copilot is currently available with English language support. However, Microsoft is working to support other languages. Microsoft Copilot can be a useful tool for writers, students, and even anyone who is tech-savvy. It can increase productivity by speeding up the writing process, detecting grammar and spelling errors, and helping to create more creative and informative content.

The following diagram provides a visual representation of how Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 works.

Semantic Index

Semantic index provides a whole new way of looking at your data in Microsoft 365. Through enhanced interactions and new indexing of your individual and company data through the Microsoft Graph, semantic indexing is an enhancement to Microsoft 365 search that underpins the next generation of Search and Copilot experiences. Semantic indexing takes into account security and policies in the Microsoft Graph so that when a user submits a query directly through search or in a Microsoft 365 chat through Copilot, it is always in the context of the user's security and only content accessible to the user is returned.

The semantic index does more than improve search results; it works to help you understand your data, find information faster, and increase productivity. Users can initially interact with the semantic index through the Microsoft 365 Chat integration, and then over time Microsoft will enhance the search experience in SharePoint Online, Microsoft Teams, and the Microsoft 365 app:

Does Copilot learn from my data?

Description. The whole point of Microsoft 365 Copilot is that it builds on your data so that the results are unique to you, your team and your business. Whether it's a call in Teams, emails in Outlook, or presentations created in PowerPoint, Microsoft 365 will always be learning so it can provide you with an up-to-date answer to any query.

How to use Copilot in Excel?

Here you have an Excel spreadsheet with sales figures for the first quarter. "Analyse the data and tell me the three key trends," you ask Copilot. After a few seconds, you get a simple bullet list summarising the three trends it has identified.

Can I use Microsoft Copilot in Word?

Since the days of WordPerfect, we've wished that the computer would write our content for us, especially tedious and repetitive tasks like creating monthly reports. With Copilot Word, it looks like this dream will finally become a reality; it can generate text based on your data and create the new report in the same style as your existing documents.

Can Copilot be used in PowerPoint?

Copilot can turn natural language prompts into presentations with multiple slides, animations, transitions and even speaker notes. Copilot can condense presentations with the click of a button, and the user can set layouts, reformat text and perfectly time transitions with natural language. What's more, Copilot can convert Word documents into PowerPoint presentations.

 Is Copilot available in Outlook?

 Copilot for Outlook will be a feature beyond just autocomplete. First, it will help you categorise your emails, but it will also help you reply quickly and concisely using context. Imagine the complexity of having countless people attached to an email and everyone replying. Copilot will summarise these mixed responses, making unstructured information useful. Microsoft announced in November 2023 that Copilot would be available in Outlook in early 2024.

Teams

Users can call Copilot in any chat.

Copilot can summarise chat content up to 30 days prior to the last message in a given chat. Copilot uses only the single chat conversation as the source content for responses and cannot refer to other chats or data types (for example, meeting transcripts, emails, and files). Users can interact with Copilot by selecting pre-written prompts or by typing their own questions. Responses contain clickable citations that direct users to the relevant source content used.

Copilot uses the transcript in real time to answer user questions. It uses only the transcript and knows the name of the user who typed the question. The user can type any question or use predetermined prompts; however, Copilot only answers questions about the meeting conversation from the transcript. After the meeting ends, the user can copy and paste a response on the Summary page and access Copilot.

It makes meetings and sessions more creative and effective. You can ask Copilot to generate ideas, organise them into themes, create designs that can bring them to life and summarise their content.

OneNote

You can easily find what you need by using prompts to draft plans, generate ideas, create lists and organise information.

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