One of the major drivers of human-AI collaboration and the shaping of future work will be Microsoft Copilot. Microsoft first invested US$1 billion in OpenAI back in 2019. At that point, the deal received no more attention than any average corporate venture. The market was hot, and it seemed nothing special if any tech company with enough financial muscles invested in such a startup.
When the news came out in early 2023 that Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI cumulated to US$13 billion, many analyzers, as well as CEOs in the tech giants, just woke up. And from there, it is history: the release of the New Bing Search engine, Microsoft Copilot, Enhanced capabilities of Azure AI solutions, and Windows Copilot, to name some.
But what is Microsoft Copilot in reality? Microsoft introduces it as its artificial intelligence assistant feature for Microsoft 365 applications and services. While it may seem like just a feature, it is, in fact, a revolution unlike anything seen for decades. Being able to draft a proposal from some random meeting notes you took yesterday with one click, getting all the actions you agreed on during a Teams audio or video call and the responsibilities for each action listed with one click, drafting a complete sales proposal with one click, getting an answer to any question about something related to your organization and work by asking it to an intelligent agent via a search box, even if the answer lies somewhere among trillions of characters stored in millions of files across your entire organization and your own local files, creating a PowerPoint presentation about a topic with few clicks and getting ready for a meeting from starting to think what you need to present to having a nicely designed slide deck in maybe 15 to 30 minutes, are some of the examples from hundreds of use cases of Copilot.
If there is one software solution that can bring productivity to the corporate world, as well as smaller businesses over the next five years, I bet it is Microsoft Copilot. That is firstly because of its reach potentially to billions of devices and users. In addition, using Copilot, you can do almost any of the tasks mentioned in my previous articles. It is this well-thought-out design and positioning, its reach to hundreds of millions of machines with the latest Windows operating system, and Microsoft’s power and global dominance which will make this possible.
But how does Microsoft Copilot work? Copilot uses the power of next-generation AI and combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data in the Microsoft Graph, Microsoft Graph – a Microsoft API developer platform that connects multiple services and devices – and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet. Copilot is integrated into Microsoft 365 in two ways. It works alongside the user, embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps you use every day — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams and more — to unleash creativity, unlock productivity and up-level skills. In addition, Copilot works as a Business Chat across the LLM, the Microsoft 365 apps, and your data — your calendar, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and contacts — to do things you’ve never been able to do before. You can give it natural language prompts like ‘Tell my team how we updated the product strategy,’ and it will generate a status update based on the morning’s meetings, emails, and chat threads.
Learning to create superior creativity and productivity with Microsoft Copilot will be among the top differentiators of successful knowledge workers of the decade in front of us.
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