Insights
Insights
Artificial intelligence is one of the most critical technologies in the world right now. After having taken the world by storm over the past couple of years, every company wants to integrate it into their business. Moreover, Microsoft has provided companies with the ideal tool to do precisely that with Copilot.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a versatile and potent assistant that can help you with anything you need, across a range of Microsoft products. But Copilot can often seem like magic for a lot of people — after all, how does it work? And what are the specifics of it? Can it do anything?
These are just some of the questions that are commonly asked about Copilot for Microsoft 365. In this article, we’re going to answer some of your burning questions, so you can know the ins and outs of Microsoft 365 Copilot and how it works.
In simple terms, you type in a prompt, and Copilot generates an answer to that prompt. That’s about how simple it is to use Copilot in any case, but the answer to how it works beyond that is more than just searching for the answer to your question.
Copilot is an artificial intelligence, but more importantly, a living language model. It learns from the data that it’s fed, meaning that its intelligence comes from its training data and its ability to use that data to solve problems.
The training process is incredibly complex and takes lots of time to ensure that responses are not only rich but also accurate and helpful, and is constantly ongoing. When you send Copilot a prompt, it uses its training and learned data to be able to generate output that seems like a human, using natural language.
Copilot is constantly evolving and learning, gaining access to new training data all the time. The knowledge cut-off for the free version of Copilot — the date that Copilot, in its current state, stopped learning data — is April 2023, meaning that it won’t know anything that has happened since this date. However, this is constantly changing with new updates and innovations.
When it comes to improving its capabilities, Copilot is continually enhanced to perform more tasks within the Microsoft 365 environment. There will be things that Copilot probably won’t ever be able to do — as we’ll discuss later — but the developers at Microsoft have been adding more and more to its capabilities and its ability to enhance the 365 ecosystem thoroughly over 2024.
As said previously, the knowledge cut-off for Copilot is April 2023, meaning that its training data is all from before that date. However, Microsoft Copilot can also search using Bing and extrapolate data from the internet through that.
This means that the data available to Copilot is anything accessible through Bing, technically, but is also dependent on its capabilities and whether it’s able to find that data through searching effectively.
Copilot isn’t simply magic, and due to the limits of AI and how Copilot has been trained, there are a lot of limitations for Copilot. All AI has limitations due to the physical limitations of technology. It’s not a magical device; it only works within the current limitations of technology. Copilot does have its own limitations as a language model, though, that need to be considered.
Here are the main ones:
These are the main limitations of Microsoft Copilot and are vital to consider when using it. After all, like all AI, the model is only as good as the data it’s trained on, and — while Microsoft has generally trained it to be neutral — it can pick up biases or false information that would otherwise go unnoticed.
There are also specific technical limitations for Copilot, which can prevent it from performing specific tasks in Microsoft 365 applications. This includes file size limitations, word limitations, thread size limitations, and so forth.
Also, scope is a massive part of this. Copilot’s scope means that it can only search in specific places, and should be considered. For example, Copilot for Microsoft Excel can only search in a table, with no reference capabilities.
Copilot can be customised for your business’s needs through the utilisation of dedicated apps like Copilot Studio and plugins that you can use to enhance your experience. Copilot Studio is the best way to do this, as it allows you to design, develop, and deploy custom AI copilots tailored to your business needs in just a few clicks.
Custom agents are another example of how you can tailor Copilot to your needs. You can make agents that can automate tasks, provide support, generate content, and so much more.
Microsoft Copilot for 365 can often feel like magic, causing you to scratch your head. Still, these answers have hopefully provided clarity and helped you understand the ins and outs of Copilot for Microsoft 365.
If you’re looking to get started with Copilot for Microsoft 365 and need help implementing it into your business, reach out to us today. We’re here to help and will ensure you have everything you need to be able to use Copilot for Microsoft 365 successfully in your business.
Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.