Microsoft has rebranded all variants of its existing and upcoming Bing Chat feature simply as Copilot, with the aim of giving the first-party generative AI assistant a consistent identity across its products. This also applies to the upcoming Bing Chat Enterprise tool that’s set to arrive 1 December onwards, which will be available for free as part of specific Microsoft 365 licences or US$5 a month as a standalone subscription.
According to the company, Copilot is based on OpenAI’s GPT-4 and DALL-E 3 generative AI models, and will not be used to save user prompts or responses for further training. In addition, Microsoft said it will gradually add more personalisation options to the Microsoft 365 version of Copilot (formerly known as Bing Chat Enterprise) via future updates starting with Word and PowerPoint, which will allow users to set their preferred formatting, as well as style and tone.
One of the features that’s coming soon to Word is an ability that allows users to easily discern the latest changes to a document by simply by asking Copilot a question. Meanwhile in PowerPoint, users will be able to use corporate brand assets and easily reimagine them using AI-generated visuals.
For Microsoft Teams, Copilot will gain the ability to take notes and quote participant remarks throughout meetings, provide answers on the fly without enabling transcription, as well as list and visualise discussions in a collaborative space in Whiteboard that all participants can access. Moreover, users can also use the tool to synthesise long posts or review key happenings throughout the day in Teams channels. All of these new features will be arriving sometime next year, the company noted.
Last but not least, Microsoft said Copilot on Outlook will be able to comb through invitation details, related emails and documents to build a summary of events that users can review quickly. Unlike Teams, Copilot features on the company’s email organiser will be available earlier sometime in spring next year.
Alongside the rebranding, Microsoft also introduced a dedicated website for Copilot via copilot.microsoft.com – giving you immediate access to a specialised chat interface, much like ChatGPT. This pretty much lets you utilise the company’s first-party generative AI tool and its search function without needing to load up Bing.com, though keep in mind that it requires you log in first and will only work on either Microsoft Edge or Google Chrome web browsers.
(Source: Microsoft [official blog])
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