At the Microsoft Ignite 2023, Microsoft unveiled its strategy to lean more into AI as part of its move to a more enhanced computing paradigm. AI will feature more in their products, both on the consumer and the enterprise sides. To begin with, the company just rebranded Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise to simply Copilot.
After rolling out Copilot on Windows 11 installs, it is the turn of the online tool Bing Chat to be rebranded as Copilot. Microsoft is touting a safer AI experience as customers using Copilot in Bing, Edge and Windows will receive the benefit of commercial data protection. This is when users log in using a Microsoft Entra ID. Over time, Microsoft will also expand the eligibility of Copilot with commercial data protection to even more Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) users at no additional cost.
Not only Bing Chat is getting Copilot, but several other SaaS offerings from Microsoft are also getting the Copilot rebrand. This includes Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365, Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Guides and Microsoft Copilot for Azure.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 is set to bring new value to Microsoft’s customers. The customers will now have access to Microsoft Copilot Dashboard to show how Copilot is impacting their organization. Microsoft is introducing new personalization capabilities that help Copilot offer responses that are tailored to the customer’s unique preferences and role. For example, new features for Copilot in Outlook help customers prep for meetings while Copilot in Microsoft Teams will offer new whiteboarding and note-taking experiences during meetings. Even classic applications like PowerPoint and Excel will have access to Copilot with Microsoft 365.
Based on feedback from early access customers, Microsoft shared the following data on Copilot’s effectiveness in daily productivity tasks:
- 70% of Copilot users said they were more productive and 68% said it improved the quality of their work; 68% said it helped jumpstart the creative process.
- Overall, users were 29% faster at specific tasks (searching, writing and summarizing).
- Users caught up on a missed meeting nearly 4x faster.
- 64% of users said Copilot helps them spend less time processing email.
- 87% of users said Copilot makes it easier to get started on a first draft.
- 75% of users said Copilot “saves me time by finding whatever I need in my files.”
- 77% of users said once they use Copilot, they don’t want to give it up.
Copilot (formerly Bing Chat and Bing Chat Enterprise) will be out of preview and become generally available starting 1 December. Copilot for Microsoft 365 is available from this month onwards for 365 customers to roll out via their network.
