At the Microsoft 365 Copilot conference just held by Microsoft, Microsoft officially installed OpenAI’s GPT-4 model into the Office suite and launched a new AI function Copilot.The way most people work has been completely upended by Microsoft from now on.
Before this, we have seen the strength of the GPT-4 model, but if we want to throw PPT, Word, and Excel documents at work to it, can it really handle it? After watching Microsoft’s demo, we can summarize what Copilot can do for you:
In Word, it can edit, summarize and create together with us;
In PowerPoint, it can turn a one-sentence idea into a presentation;
In Excel, it can analyze trends and realize data visualization;
In Outlook, it manages the inbox;
In the meeting, it can organize the meeting summary and determine the goal at any time;
In development, it can simplify the development process;
In business communication, it can summarize chats, compose emails, and even write plans.
Word: Make drafts, write proposals, all done with one command
Microsoft 365 Copilot is integrated in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that we use every day. It will help you deal with all the trivial matters, and you only need to focus on the most important work.
In the past, you had to stay up all night to catch up on thesis assignments, planning proposals, and legal contracts. Now you only need to give Copilot an instruction and you can write them.
This is not to fool people with AI writing cliches. Copilot calls the files you have stored on OneDirve, and writes the appropriate content you need based on the information you provide.
For example, you can ask Copilot to draft a two-page proposal report based on prepared thesis materials and scientific data, or use this quarter’s sales data to make a quarterly summary.If you are not satisfied with what Copilot has written, you can rewrite it in a more professional, passionate or leisurely tone, or make it longer or shorter.These effects do not require you to copy and paste, modify the format, all you need to do is to enter commands into Copilot like a chat, and then, a document that used to be written with countless hairs in the past is so simply completed.
Excel: Farewell to functions, visualization only needs one command
If you often have to deal with Excel at work, and you can’t remember functions or learn to visualize charts, Copilot can also help a lot.
Inserting tables, adjusting formatting, and importing functions are just the basics of Copilot.
If you can’t see the connection between the data, let Copilot help you analyze the key trends in one sentence.
Quarterly sales have been falling but no reason can be found. Copilot can directly generate visual charts for you to help you analyze possible variable changes.
You can also let Copilot help you simulate the current table growth rate to see how the future will affect your gross profit margin.
PowerPoint: Automatically generate PPT according to instructions
How long does it take to make a PPT? Enter the information you need to demonstrate, the style you want, click generate, and a PPT with beautiful layout and rich animation is born.
Copilot can even annotate presentations. If you are not satisfied with the animation effect, you can tell Copilot at any time to adjust the layout accordingly (such as aligning the picture to the left) and set the animation time.
One feature of Copilot that really moved me was the ability to convert Word documents into presentations.
Outlook: an exclusive secretary who can write and read
For many people, writing and replying to emails is a very boring thing – cumbersome courteous sentences make the exchange of information extremely complicated and reduce the efficiency of communication.
With Copilot, you can throw these trivial matters to it, and spend time on more important information communication.
For example, if you want to write an email to invite relatives and friends to a party, you can tell Copiot the requirements. It can not only help you write the invitation email, but also find the agreed place based on your historical emails, and added to the invitation.
In addition to writing emails, Copilot can also help you summarize emails you missed and help you mark all important items worth noting.
What, do you think the emails you write are long and boring? Don’t worry, it’s also a matter of pressing the mouse. Things like the tone of writing and the length of content can be adjusted through Copilot.
Teams: Welcome new team members
In addition to personal work, Copilot also plays a very important role in team collaboration.You may also have the experience of having two meetings a day, one meeting for half a day, and you don’t even know how to write a daily newspaper after get off work. Teams with Copilot can help you and your colleagues meet more efficiently.
In a meeting, it is an excellent meeting assistant, organizing key discussion points, summarizing meeting conclusions, and guiding the meeting process at any time. Even after the meeting, Copilot can help the team to formulate the agenda and participants of the next meeting, based on today’s meeting discussion content,.
If you are so busy and forget the key points of the upcoming meeting, you can also ask Copilot, and let it tell you what the key points were raised in the meeting, what differences occurred, and let it provide solutions and suggested steps.
Based on Copilot, Microsoft also announced a new feature: Business Chat (business chat). By integrating into Microsoft 365 and Windows calendar, email, documents, contacts and other software, you can let Business Chat assist the team to update meetings, emails, etc.
Artificial intelligence will change everyone’s work
Copilot is the super app the AI industry has been waiting for, fundamentally changing the way people work, freeing people from repetitive drudgery and freeing up more time and energy for more advanced creative work .
A new era of digital production has arrived. With Copilot, Word is more creative, Excel is more analytical, PowerPoint is more expressive, Outlook is more productive, and Teams is more collaborative.
So, when can we use Copilot? Microsoft is currently testing Microsoft 365 Copilot with 20 companies, including 8 Fortune 500 companies, and will continue to share information about Copilot, including feature details and pricing, in the coming months.
What is certain is that Copilot will change the way people and AI interact with each other, so that people can focus on what they are better at, or quickly master new skills, and find meaning and joy in their work.
