Microsoft Copilot: here’s what you need to know

Sabrina Ortiz/ZDNET

What is Microsoft Copilot?

Copilot is Microsoft’s artificial intelligence companion that will be integrated with all Microsoft applications and experiences, including Microsoft 365, Windows 11, Edge and Bing. With Copilot, users will be able to benefit from AI assistance in virtually all aspects of their workflows on the various Microsoft software and applications.

For example, the Microsoft 365 suite of applications, including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams, will be assisted by Copilot to optimize your workflow through them, such as generating text and tables in Word, summarizing and writing emails in Outlook, and generating Python visualizations in Excel.

Is Microsoft Copilot already available?

Since Microsoft Copilot will be integrated into different Microsoft products, the release dates will differ.

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  Copilot will start rolling out to Windows 11 from September 26th through a free Windows 11 update.
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  Copilot will start rolling out to Bing and Edge this fall.
  




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  Microsoft 35 Copilot will start rolling out for businesses on November 1 and for other users this fall.

Is Microsoft Copilot free?

The cost of Microsoft Copilot depends on the application in which it is implemented.

From November 1st, Microsoft 365 Copilot will be available for companies at a price of $30 per user per month in the USA. The tariff should be similar in euro.

As an indication, the price of the add-on is higher than that of the lowest-end Microsoft 365 corporate subscriptions, which start at € 9.40 excluding VAT per month per user and also that of the Office 365 E5 corporate subscription, Microsoft’s most high-end, which costs € 41.5 excluding VAT per month per user.

However, regarding the rest of the applications, Microsoft said: “Copilot will begin to be deployed in its initial form as part of our free Windows 11 update, starting on September 26, and in Bing, Edge and Microsoft 365 Copilot this fall”.

What is Microsoft 365 Copilot?

Microsoft 365 Copilot simply refers to the integration of the Copilot AI assistant into Microsoft’s 365 line of productivity software, including Teams, Word, Outlook, Excel and PowerPoint.

What is Microsoft 365 Chat?

Microsoft 365 Chat is part of the Microsoft 365 Copilot experience. It is a chat interface that has access to your data in your various Microsoft work applications, which allows it to answer questions and help you with your tasks.

For example, you can ask Microsoft 365 Chat to “summarize unread messages”, and it will review all your 365 applications to give you a concise summary of everything you missed.

He can also inform you about meetings, find documents for you and answer questions based on the content of your documents, meetings, chats, etc.

What is the Google equivalent of Microsoft Copilot?

Google, for its part, unveiled Microsoft’s Copilot competitor, Duet AI, at the end of August. Duet AI is an assistant that will be integrated into the Google workspace, especially in applications such as Google Docs, Slides, Meet, Gmail, Chat, etc.

Duet AI has not yet been made available to the public. Users can request a trial by filling out a form that asks for the number of employees in the organization of the interested user, if he is a Google Workspace customer and his contact information.

Source: “ZDNet.com “