Demystifying Microsoft's AI-Powered "Copilot" Tools for Office Productivity, Web Browsing, or Coding. Dead Simple Guide For Management Professionals
This guide explains how Microsoft 365 Copilot differs from "Microsoft Copilot For the Web," announced in February this year. What about Microsoft's Github Copilot, launched back in June 2022?
This is the breakdown you've been looking for.
CODING: Microsoft Github Copilot
This is the O.G. Original Gangster of Microsoft's Copilot services. Launched in June of 2022, it has quietly taken the world of software development by storm. According to Github, during Github Copilot's technical preview phase involving 1.2 million developers over 12 months, GitHub Copilot quickly became an indispensable part of developers' daily workflows, with nearly 40% of code being written by GitHub Copilot in popular coding languages, like Python. This has likely only increased since then.
June 21, 2022: GitHub Copilot is generally available to all developers
BROWSING: Microsoft Copilot For The Web (AI Features for Bing and Edge)
Announced in a blog post on February 7, this refers to new AI-enabled features of Microsoft's Bing search engine and Edge browser. When you use Bing search by going to bing.com, in addition to the expected search engine results, you'll see a response in the natural language style of ChatGPT in a new side panel. Similarly, if you install and use the Microsoft Edge Browser, you will see a side panel with an AI Powered Bing Chat search plus additional tools for composing AI-generated text. Earlier this month, in May of 2023, Microsoft expanded access to these features by going from "Limited Preview" to "Open Preview" and eliminating the wait list for trial.
Feb 7, 2023: Reinventing search with a new AI-powered Microsoft Bing and Edge, your copilot for the web
May 4, 2023: Announcing the next wave of AI innovation with Microsoft Bing and Edge
PRODUCTIVITY: Microsoft 365 Copilot
This was first previewed in March 2023, with very limited Early Access announced this week in early May 2023. I also covered this in my last post here. Copilot is integrated into Microsoft 365 in two ways. It works alongside you, embedded in the Microsoft 365 apps you use daily — Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more. Some features are similar to GitHub Copilot, which provides super-charged code completion services, but 365 Copilot works on text (like emails and meeting agendas) and on images in power points. It will also act as an intelligent assistant, able to analyze data, summarize it, and suggest actions and strategies to improve results.
