Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has welcomed the dawn of “a new era” for AI by teasing Copilot.
Copilot is a system that combines large language models with a company’s data and Microsoft apps.
It appears as if a bot within these apps. The user then gives Copilot a prompt, which it takes and runs with to simplify and automate tasks for them.
That is a simple summary. Yet, those that delve deeper will discover that Copilot works by making its way between three cornerstone technologies.
How does Copilot Work?
Copilot hinges on three technologies. These are:
- Microsoft 365 Apps – These include Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more.
- The Microsoft Graph API – This brings together content and context from emails, meetings, files, chats, calendar events, and more.
- A Large Language Model (LLM) – This is a creative engine capable of parsing and producing human-readable text.
Sitting within Microsoft 365 apps, CoPilot receives a prompt from the user and calls into Microsoft Graph. There, it retrieves business content and data, adding context to the prompt.
Then, Copilot sends the modified prompt to the LLM, a new technology many people will be familiar with through their experiences with ChatGPT. The LLM then generates a response.
Once it has done so, the LLM sends the response to Microsoft Graph for post-processing. This involves adding context and generating commands. Copilot them runs responsible AI checks alongside security, compliance, and privacy reviews.
Finally, Copilot responds to the user and sends commands back to the apps.
As Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President, Modern Work & Business Applications at Microsoft summarized:
Copilot iteratively processes and orchestrates these sophisticated services to produce a result that feels like magic.
In doing so, it opens up many opportunities to improve employee experiences. The video below brings several of these to life.
Microsoft delved deeper into many of these possibilities when launching Copilot during a live broadcast.
Indeed, Charles Lamanna, Corporate Vice President, Business Applications and Platforms at Microsoft, shared several examples of how Copilot may bolster a business’s ability to acquire and retain customers. Here are some of the most eye-catching.
Catch Up on Missed Sales Meetings
Sometimes salespeople miss important meetings due to scheduling conflicts, healthcare appointments, family emergencies, etc.
With Copilot in Teams, the salesperson can catch up on what they missed, receiving a notification when the meeting recap is ready.
In this recap, they can see the shared content, detailed notes, and action items.
To delve deeper into the notes, the salesperson can ask Copilot questions to gather more context.
Moreover, the salesperson can dig into why their colleagues made particular decisions and which other options they considered, providing citations and snapshots of the conversation transcript.
Stay On Top of Live Customer Conversations
During live interactions with customers and colleagues in Teams, salespeople can ask Copilot to summarize what has happened so far and who said what.
As the meeting progresses, they may even ask: what questions are unresolved?
Keep Your Colleagues In the Loop
Copilot helps salespeople by summarizing all their customer communications via Outlook and Teams into a single thread.
So, if a colleague asks for an update on the customer, Copoilot may produce an overview with citations – which the salesperson can verify, refine, and send.
Work On Customer Cases Together
Microsoft has embedded Copilot into Loop, its collaborations app. Here, sales and marketing teams can brainstorm with Copilot as their AI peer.
