ICYMI: Microsoft Debuted An AI-Powered Copilot That Feels Like 'Clippy' On Steroids

Microsoft Corporation MSFT announced a new artificial intelligence-powered assistant for its 365 applications last month. 

What Happened: The Redmond, Washington-based company is testing the “power of next-generation AI” with Microsoft 365 Copilot with “select commercial customers.”

Microsoft said that the Copilot is embedded in apps that people use every day such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams.

“With these new tools, people can be more creative in Word, more analytical in Excel, more expressive in PowerPoint, more productive in Outlook and more collaborative in Teams,” said the Satya Nadella-led company in a statement.

Jared Spataro, who heads Microsoft 365, said, “Copilot marks a new era of computing that will fundamentally transform the way we work.”

Why It Matters: Microsoft highlighted how the Copilot — reminiscent of its 1990’s era office assistant Clippy, but on steroids — works through a YouTube video.

The company said that in the Word application the assistant, “writes, edits, summarizes right alongside people as they work.”

The tech giant said that in PowerPoint Copilot can turn ideas into a presentation through “natural language commands” while in Excel it can help identify trends or create data visualizations.

Microsoft is moving quickly to bolster its products with AI. In February, the company added AI to its Edge web browser and Bing search engine. The company said at the time that Bing was running on a “next generation” large language model made by ChatGPT creator OpenAI.

In March, the company announced the stable version of Edge, which is equipped with “Edge Copilot” in the sidebar.

The Edge Copilot will help users boost their productivity as it will assist in composing “better emails” and help them “search the web faster,” said Microsoft in the release notes.

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Photo courtesy: Microsoft