What is Microsoft 365 Copilot
Microsoft Copilot is a Large Language Model utilized as a personal assistant that is integrated in Microsoft Apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams. Furthermore Microsoft will introduce a new Experience called “Business Chat”.
Copilot is the result of a consequent development of personal assistants for Microsoft Products. Many of you might remember “Clippy” the advice giving paper clip build into early Microsoft Office products. “Cortana” was the next personal assistant by Microsoft installed in various products. Copilot covers the same need but more.
The promise is to unleash creativity, unlock productivity and uplevel skills. Or will it destroy creativity? It will certainly produce vast amounts of data.
How does Copilot work
By beeing integrated in the most used business Apps Microsoft Copilot will change the work of millions of people.
Word: Copilot can integrate information from shared documents within the organization, and is able to generate an initial draft based on a given prompt. In addition, it has the ability to adjust the tone of the text to suit the intended audience, whether it be formal or informal.
Excel: Copilot can interpret natural language prompts to provide answers and recommendations, minimizing the need for complex formulas. It can produce various visualization and charts without altering the spreadsheet.
PowerPoint: Copilot can generate a slide deck based on an outline or a Word document, and simplify the creating of professional presentations.
Outlook: Copilot can not only respond quickly to routine emails, but also gather content from email threads and other Microsoft 365 sources. It can also adjust the tone and length of responses.
Teams: Copilot is capable of setting meeting agendas and schedules in Teams, and acting as an effective decision-maker by listing the pros and cons of any discussion and suggesting next steps.
Business Chat: Copilot enables users to access their calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts all in one place, facilitating collaboration and streamlining project management.
A whole new way to work
It is easy to see, that Microsoft Copilot will transform our understanding of work. Summarizing meetings and pointing out the keyfacts. Consider it done! You want a powerpoint presentation about the clients subject? Here you have it. Microsoft is giving every office employee a powerful personal assistant that will increase the capacity, throughput and efficiency of it’s users.
Hatespeech in your proposal deck
As impressive as Copilot is, using the generated output of it unfiltered can lead to problems. Large language models can fail by inserting e.g. gender or racial bias into text or make things up by hallucinating. It’s alarming enough that those quirks can be found in output of search engines but imagine the consequences of such biases in Excel spreadsheets or your email inbox.
Here we also touch another important subject this blog will try to dive deeper in. Who is responsible if Copilot insulted your Client? Should the Large Language Model be blamed or should the user that didn’t quality check the output be blamed?
The value of a handwritten letter
Since Copilot will certainly boost the generation of Documents, Presentations, E-Mails etc. we must ask who will still be able to intake all that data ? Certainly this flood will increase the need of prioritizing your informational intake. Considering this, how much would you appreciate a handwritten letter?
