Artificial Intelligence is here and it is here to stay. After an initial phase where all the potential they offer us has been demonstrated, it was a matter of time before it was integrated into applications / services. While ChatGPT has chosen to integrate its AI through extensions, Microsoft has integrated its platform within Office.
This functionality, called Copilot and which is still in a very early beta phase and with access to a very limited number of users, is initially focused on large companies. Copilot will be available for Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, as the company stated during the presentation, however, it is not ruled out that in the future it could reach other applications where AI can make sense and be useful.
What Copilot can do in Microsoft 365
The first thing that we must be clear about is that this functionality will only be available through the Microsoft 365 subscription. In addition, it will not be included in the subscription, but we will have to pay an extra to be able to enjoy this function. And, in case you are wondering, the first thing to know about the integration of AI in Office is that its main use will not be to generate text based on a description.
Thanks to Copilot in Word, we can ask you to summarize all the text in a document, to rewrite a paragraph, to change the focus of the entire document, to change the format to adapt it to a specific need or design, to suggest changes in a document among others.
Regarding Excel, this function will allow users to create a summary table based on various data sources, highlighting the most important positive and negative points as well as offering suggestions on how to best present the figures. We will also be able to ask you to create a specific graph based on the data in a table, change its format once established, and much more.
If we talk about Copilot in PowerPoint, we have to talk about the possibility of creating a presentation based on a Word document where the most important points are highlighted in independent slides, automatically including images based on the text.
The main attraction of Outlook is the possibility of answering emails automatically as they are received, including the necessary data that may be available in the different applications that are part of Word.
When presenting the results, Copilot will ask users if we want the results to be displayed in the same document we are in or if we want a new document to be created from scratch. At the moment, as we have mentioned above, Copilot is currently in beta phase. We also do not know what the price will be for this function that will only be available through Microsoft 365.
