What you need to know
- Microsoft has unveiled new AI capabilities coming to Office 365 at an event.
- Microsoft calls this AI “Copilot,” and it will make writing Word documents easier.
- With user input, you can ask Word to generate entire texts based on your own requirements.
Microsoft has announced that it’s bringing AI to all its Office applications, including Word via a new “Copilot” feature that can generate texts based on user prompts using natural language. You can ask Word to help with creating a report on a certain topic, and even point to offline source material such as other documents on your computer.
Once Copilot generates text, the user has the choice to edit it, including using the AI to rewrite certain parts in a different tone or context, or discard it completely. The AI can also do formatting, meaning users with only basic Word knowledge will be able to create more advanced layouts thanks to AI.
Copilot can even review documents, including spelling, punctuation, and even offer suggestions and changes based on your own likes and dislikes. The design of Copilot means it should make writing and editing Word documents much faster.
Here’s how Microsoft describes Copilot for Word:
“Copilot in Word writes, edits, summarizes, and creates right alongside you. With only a brief prompt, Copilot in Word will create a first draft for you, bringing in information from across your organization as needed. Copilot can add content to existing documents, summarize text, and rewrite sections or the entire document to make it more concise. You can even get suggested tones—from professional to passionate and casual to thankful—to help you strike the right note. Copilot can also help you improve your writing with suggestions that strengthen your arguments or smooth inconsistencies.”
AI coming to Word is just one part of today’s announcements from Microsoft. Copilot is coming to all Office apps, including PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook. Use it to reply to emails, organize data in a speadsheet, or design a presentation based on a recent essay you wrote. It can do it all.
Microsoft says AI functionality in Word will roll out over the coming months, and is in limited testing “20 customers,” likely to be enterprise customers, right now.
