Microsoft has announced Copilot, a GPT-4-based virtual assistant integrated directly into the Microsoft 365 office suite and other company applications. The AI will help write documents, summarize meetings, and offer a chatbot that will centralize all internal company information.
Information had leaked at the beginning of the year that MicrosoftMicrosoft intended to integrateartificial intelligenceartificial intelligence in Office software. It is now done, and just like with Bing, the firm has used GPT-4, the new version of the large language model (LLM) behind ChatGPTChatGPT.
Called Copilot, this AI is intended to assist in productivity and therefore differs significantly from ChatGPT. Copilot will be accessible from all applications Microsoft 365Microsoft 365. This includes including Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as Teams and Outlook. It will be possible to ask him to create a first draft of a document or a presentation by taking an example from an existing file. AI can also update documents or create a summary on demand using natural language.
Business Chat, a conversational agent for the company
Copilot connects to Microsoft Graph, the platform that manages all company data in Microsoft 365, Windows and Azure. Any query to Copilot is first enriched with user data from Microsoft Graph and then passed to the LLM. The response is then processed through Microsoft Graph to verify security and privacy, before being transmitted to the user. This access to data is also the basis of a new function. Microsoft announced at the same time Business Chat, a chatbot specifically adapted to each company, capable of answering questions from employees. For example, in case of absence it can provide a summary of all the changes taking into account the meetings, discussions and e-mails exchanged by the team.
The AI will be available within applicationsapplications Microsoft 365 in the coming months, and the firm will announce the price of the licenses later.