Microsoft hasn’t held back on its claims about the power of Copilot. However, despite it being billed as “next-generation AI” that will “turn your words into the most powerful productivity tool on the planet,” I just can’t see myself ever wanting to give it a go.
Before I explain why I’m not so keen, let’s look at exactly what Copilot is and what it does. In Microsoft 365 apps—including Teams, Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Excel—Copilot helps you create, organize, and format content either by responding to your instructions or using existing data in other files and information from a large language model (language patterns found on the internet). It also has a chatbot that can help you along the way with your work.
If you’re a personal user, Copilot for Microsoft 365 costs $20 per user per month (or £19 if you’re in the UK), with no option to purchase an annual subscription. Businesses pay more but have the opportunity to save money through a yearly bill. All these prices are on top of your Microsoft 365 subscription.
I Want to Do the Work Myself
In short, I don’t trust it to do the job I want it to do. Even Microsoft itself admits that although “sometimes Copilot will be right, other times, [it will be] usefully wrong.” With that in mind, I won’t be able to stop myself from going back through and checking everything, which kind of defeats the point of an all-powerful AI. What’s more, Microsoft claims that “you’re always in control” with Copilot but goes on to remind you that you have to “decide what to keep, modify, or discard”—a process that would certainly make me question whether it would save me any time at all.
Admittedly, I do sometimes use the scaled-back version of Grammarly to help me pick up those pesky typos—but I’m avoiding subscribing to Grammarly’s premium offering, as I worry it’ll offer too many suggestions and make me wade through thick mud before being able to declare my work as complete. Even Microsoft Word’s Editor sometimes gets in the way. I can only imagine how hindered I would be by an AI invading my Word document and Excel spreadsheet with suggestions and changes for me to review.
Then, there comes the issue of having to adjust the way I work. I already have my go-to ways of getting stuff done, and that’s taken many years of practice to achieve. With Copilot for Microsoft 365, I’d have to substantially change my behavior to work out how to use it effectively, like learning how to properly phrase and refine my commands, and having to shift my methodology so dramatically puts me off subscribing. I feel that Copilot is better aimed at businesses with the time and means to train their staff.
Possibly my biggest concern with originality relates to tone and framing. People I’ve sent emails to over the years will have become accustomed to my phrasing, and they will undoubtedly sense that something isn’t quite right when they read an email I have constructed through Copilot in Outlook. Yes, you can choose different email tones and lengths, and regenerate drafts if you’re not happy with what Copilot has produced, but I’m still sure that it’ll never be able to replicate my personal language styles.
Ultimately, I enjoy creating original work from scratch and putting my name to it—I feel I would be cheating the system if I were to rely on AI, and this raises ethical concerns that I can’t shake off. Similarly, I take pleasure in overcoming complex formulas in Excel and seeing the desirable outcome, and this sense of pride would almost certainly disappear as Copilot matures. See it like a calculator—if you don’t exercise your mathematical skills, you can become over-reliant on tech and lose fundamental abilities. The same applies to relying on AI to create your work for you. They’re valuable skills that I don’t want to let wilt away.
Snags in Copilot for Microsoft 365
Don’t get me wrong. I can certainly see some benefits of using Copilot for Microsoft 365, but it’s not necessarily everything it’s marketed to be:
- To create a snazzy Copilot-produced PowerPoint presentation, you must prepare the content in Word. Copilot won’t do the work for you.
- Copilot for Microsoft 365 does not yet understand or support colloquial expressions in some languages, so creating informal documents or emails in some countries might be a little tricky.
- Some reviews mention that the use of Copilot for Microsoft 365 across the different apps isn’t very intuitive. For example, certain commands that work in Word mightn’t work as well in Excel, and in Word, you can use other files to create your content, but you can’t in Microsoft Loop. I might be more tempted to give it a go if it didn’t sound like I’d have to get used to it in different ways across Microsoft’s suite of apps.
- Copilot is still in a developmental stage. As with many Microsoft products, they improve markedly over time—but when I throw a few words into a search engine, it doesn’t take long for people’s complaints about this new tech to rear their ugly heads. It’s just too early for me to even think about engaging in using Copilot for Microsoft 365.
I’m Resisting Microsoft’s Persistence
Whether you like it or not, Microsoft insists on you using its AI, and I do worry that, in the future, I won’t have a choice.
As soon as I go onto the Microsoft 365 website, I see a Copilot ad in a banner at the top of the homepage.
Likewise, if I visit the Microsoft 365 X account, I see that the pinned post is about Copilot.
Even moving away from Microsoft 365, the ever-present Copilot icon on the taskbar is a reminder of Microsoft’s wish to involve Copilot in everything you do. Also, when writing this article on Microsoft Edge, if I select some text, I get a pop-up saying “Rewrite with Copilot.”
It seems like the rumbles before an earthquake. Microsoft is gradually increasing Copilot’s screen space in the hope that we will become used to its presence by osmosis. I’m not keen on this strategy, especially when I already pay $69.99 a year for the Microsoft 365 subscription—I’m paying for what I know is a great package, and I don’t need that to be blighted with Copilot here and Copilot there.
Is Copilot Really That Good?
Ultimately, as with most software and AI, there are pros and cons. Copilot for Microsoft 365 is particularly intuitive in Outlook, where it can recap those long and tedious email threads in a few seconds, cutting out the niceties to present the essential information. It also works well in Teams, where you can create a transcript of your conversation for use later on. Copilot for Microsoft 365 can be helpful in writing Excel formulas, but that’s something that can be easily done with the free tools already embedded within the program or by using existing, more established AIs like ChatGPT or Gemini.
Many online reviews suggest it still has a long way to go before it can really be deemed a true AI assistant. Indeed, our very own Corbin Davenport says that the Copilot-Word integration still isn’t up to scratch, and he agrees that AI simply can’t align with the personal voice you would have otherwise expressed when typing an email. In fact, when I asked my colleagues at How-To Geek to share some positive experiences of using Copilot for Microsoft 365, nobody could come up with any responses! This means that they’ve not tried it yet (due to its underdeveloped state), or they have tried it and not been impressed.
There’s no doubt that Copilot is here to stay. I was resistant to paying for everything by card rather than cash, but that’s become commonplace. I didn’t like the idea of using technology in football, but that’s going nowhere, either. I just hope that getting used to this AI is a smoother process than it appears, but only time will tell.
Source: Microsoft
