Microsoft Copilot Launches Worldwide Tomorrow, but What the Hell Is It?

Microsoft’s generative AI work assistant Copilot will debut to millions of enterprise customers Wednesday. Chief Information Officers around the country are stepping up training in preparation for the Microsoft 365 product launch, according to the Wall Street Journal, and it may be a change coming to your office place as well.

Microsoft 365 Copilot uses generative AI to do all the things you’d ask that helpful intern to do. The tool summarizes lengthy emails, writes draft responses, and transforms Word documents into PowerPoint presentations. Copilot will also attend a meeting on your behalf, summarizing the topics discussed, logging attendees, and flagging any action items to you. The product will roll out to more than one million companies in the U.S. that use Microsoft 365 tomorrow.

If you still don’t understand how to use Copilot, you can always ask Microsoft 365 Chat, a chatbot powered by ChatGPT’s generative AI. The chatbot can scan all the apps in your Microsoft suite to gather information, along with ChatGPT’s general internet scraping abilities. If you were out for a week, you could ask Microsoft 365 Chat “Did anything happen with our client Gizmodo last week?” and Copilot will summarize any relevant mentions from your company’s emails, calendars, documents, and presentations.

The assistant rolled out to select users last month, but this broader launch will reach significantly more of Microsoft’s user base. The integration of ChatGPT into Office products is a significant piece of Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar deal with Open AI, and it’s expected to be one of the most broadly used applications of ChatGPT in everyday life.

Microsoft Copilot, with all of its features, is not free. Enterprise customers will have to pay $30 a month per user.

Older Microsoft users may remember Clippy, a personified paper clip and Microsoft Office digital assistant launched in 1997. A beloved character of early computer technology, Clippy was removed from Office in 2007 to the dismay of many who loved him.