What is it – what’s it for – how can you use it – when’s it launching..?
This is what people really want to know !
What is it..?
Copilot is Microsoft’s integrated AI solution for their environment. Available in two forms, it offers a price-differentiated service depending on the users’ needs.
Copilot Pro
a subscription-based service for those users within the 365 environment wanting full integration with their own live data.
What Microsoft say –
For those looking for accelerated performance and creativity capabilities, Copilot Pro supercharges your Copilot experience. This monthly subscription includes everything in Copilot, plus:
- Gain priority access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo including during peak times for accelerated performance to get things done faster
- Access Copilot in selected Microsoft 365 apps to draft documents, summarise emails, create presentations and more
- Create AI images with DALL-E 3 in landscape format even faster with 100 boosts per day with Designer (formerly Bing Image Creator)
Copilot (free)
the slimmed-down version of the above that has no access to your personal data.
What Microsoft say –
For everyone who wants to find the right information, create unique content and get things done faster. With your free Microsoft account, you can:
- Use Copilot on the web and in Windows, macOS and iPadOS
- Access GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo during non-peak times
- Use text, voice and images in conversational search
- Create AI images with 15 boosts per day with Designer (formerly Bing Image Creator)
- Use plug-ins and GPTs
What can I do with it..?
Well this is the crux of the matter isn’t it. Copilot Pro is designed to be integrated into Microsoft 365. 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. By rapidly analysing your data, repetitive tasks can be consumed with ease and delivered in the format you specifiy…enabling your time to be more effectively spent on REAL business issues.
This is how Microsoft describe it:
Unleash creativity. With Copilot in Word, you can jump-start the creative process so you never start with a blank slate again. Copilot gives you a first draft to edit and iterate on — saving hours in writing, sourcing, and editing time. Sometimes Copilot will be right, other times usefully wrong — but it will always put you further ahead. You’re always in control as the author, driving your unique ideas forward, prompting Copilot to shorten, rewrite or give feedback. Copilot in PowerPoint helps you create beautiful presentations with a simple prompt, adding relevant content from a document you made last week or last year. And with Copilot in Excel, you can analyse trends and create professional-looking data visualisations in seconds.
Unlock productivity. We all want to focus on the 20% of our work that really matters, but 80% of our time is consumed with busywork that bogs us down. Copilot lightens the load. From summarising long email threads to quickly drafting suggested replies, Copilot in Outlook helps you clear your inbox in minutes, not hours. And every meeting is a productive meeting with Copilot in Teams. It can summarise key discussion points — including who said what and where people are aligned and where they disagree — and suggest action items, all in real time during a meeting. And with Copilot in Power Platform, anyone can automate repetitive tasks, create chatbots and go from idea to working app in minutes.
Copilot doesn’t just supercharge individual productivity. It creates a new knowledge model for every organisation — harnessing the massive reservoir of data and insights that lies largely inaccessible and untapped today. Business Chat works across all your business data and apps to surface the information and insights you need from a sea of data — so knowledge flows freely across the organisation, saving you valuable time searching for answers. You will be able to access Business Chat from Microsoft 365.com, from Bing when you’re signed in with your work account, or from Teams.
Uplevel skills. Copilot makes you better at what you’re good at and lets you quickly master what you’ve yet to learn. The average person uses only a handful of commands — such as “animate a slide” or “insert a table” — from the thousands available across Microsoft 365. Now, all that rich functionality is unlocked using just natural language. And this is only the beginning.
Copilot will fundamentally change how people work with AI and how AI works with people. As with any new pattern of work, there’s a learning curve — but those who embrace this new way of working will quickly gain an edge.
When’s it available..?
well, now actually, depending on your environment.
The free version can be access via https://copilot.microsoft.com/ if you have a valid 365 login, whereas Pro is an add-on license facility that is being rolled-out across the various 365 licensing schemes currently.
Alchemy Summary
Thinking of Copilot as a “time saving tool”, removing the simple tasks so you can focus your skills on making a difference, means you won’t be far off the mark with where this solution is aimed.
The judgement call for Business will be whether the monthly charge that is levied by Microsoft will deliver that real net-positive benefit, so picking and choosing the environments where it is delivered into will be the real critical task going forwards.
Time will tell what those environments are . . .
