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3 ways Microsoft are using ChatGPT: Copilot, Bing Preview and Virtual Agents
Microsoft have made a slew of announcements about how they will be using ChatGPT to incorporate artificial intelligence into their software, including Copilot within Microsoft 365, AI search within Bing and intelligent Power Platform virtual agents (chatbots).

Posted by Andy Brown on 28 March 2023

In this blog

Using Copilot
Using Bing Preview

ChatGPT and Microsoft 365

Following Microsoft's investment in OpenAI (the US organisation behind ChatGPT), they have made 3 announcements about how they will be incorporating it in their software.

Software	Announcements
Microsoft 365	Microsoft have announced that they will be incorporating AI (based upon their investment in ChatGPT) into Word, PowerPoint, Outlook and Excel - and Teams. The new service will be called Copilot, which is a huge improvement on the ubiquitous and annoying Clippie which older readers will remember well. More details below!
Bing	You can sign up for Bing Preview (although Microsoft wouldn't let me do this using my work Microsoft account; instead I ended up creating a personal account using my mobile phone number!). You can see an example of me using Bing preview below.
Power Platform	Never one to miss a rolling bandwagon, Microsoft have also announced in the last month that they will be incorporating ChatGPT into the Power Platform tools (primarily into the Power Virtual Agent tool).

Microsoft haven't said when they will be releasing Copilot, other than to say that at the moment they are testing it with a small number of clients.

Using Copilot

Copilot will pop up in your favourite Office applications, allowing you to type in natural language questions:

If the results for ChatGPT-within-Office are anything like as good as for ChatGPT on the web, this will be a big time-saver.

Here's a quick summary from the Copilot launch website of how your Microsoft Office 365 life may change:

Application	Examples of what Copilot will do
Excel	Create or propose what-if scenarios, models and correlations.
Word	Create draft reports in a requested tone ("from professional to passionate to casual to thankful").
PowerPoint	Create presentations summarising Word documents, adjust layouts and create animation effects.
Outlook	Summarise email conversations and create emails with a requested tone or length.
Teams	Summarise the results of a meeting, including decisions made and disagreement points.

Copilot also includes a new service called Business Chat, which seems to be to ChatGPT what your organisation's intranet is to the internet: that is, a chance to ask natural language questions whose scope is limited to within your organisation.

Using Bing Preview

Here's what new Bing looks like:

I am so going to regret signing in to this, and linking my personal and work accounts to do so!

You can choose what sort of Bing you want to use:

I love the fact that the opposite of More Precise is More Creative!

Here's an example of a conversation I had trying to establish what should be the first thing to do before I die:

I found this to be like speaking to an (admittedly helpful) chatbot - which I guess is exactly what is happening!

Bing preview comes with a new option:

You can choose whether to use the new search facility or not.

I was underwhelmed by the few questions I tried for this - you basically get the same results as you would do from a normal search, but in a narrative rather than tabular format.

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