Copilot: AI-assisted Text Chat and Inbox Organizing in Microsoft 365 and OneDrive – Recent Results and Future Trends

There are new features in microsoft’s monthly subscription that aim to improve artificial intelligence integration in Office apps. Excel is getting Python integration inside of Copilot, PowerPoint has an improved AI-powered narrative builder, Word is getting better at AI-assisted drafts, and Copilot will be able to help you organize your Outlook inbox, too.

The Copilot and Python integration inside of excel enters public preview today, just as microsoft makes it available to its microsoft365 copilot subscribers The Copilot support, as well as the ability for theai assistant to produce more charts and pivot tables, have been added by Microsoft.

The Copilot will summarize conversations that took place in both the text chat and meetings later this month. This will help meeting organizers make sure they didn’t miss any unanswered questions that were typed into the chat. “Our customers tell us Copilot in Teams has changed meetings forever — in fact, it’s the number one place they’re seeing value,” says Spataro.

I’ve personally been waiting for improvements to Copilot in Outlook beyond drafting and summaries, and now Microsoft is starting to allow its AI assistant to organize your inbox. Copilot can now prioritize emails using a new feature. Later this year, you’ll also be able to “teach Copilot the specific topics, keywords, or people that are important to you,” according to Spataro. In your inbox, these emails will be marked as high priority.

Later this month, Microsoft is also improving Copilot in Word to let you reference data from emails and meetings, alongside data from documents. It will be easier to have an attachment from a meeting because of this. Microsoft is also rolling out Copilot in OneDrive later this month, making it easy to summarize and compare up to five files to spot differences between them.

Microsoft says 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies now use Copilot, and the number of employees who use Copilot daily nearly doubled quarter over quarter. Both of these data points appear to include the free version of Copilot. Microsoft has won over a big customer for Microsoft 365 Copilot: Vodafone is signing up for 68,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses for its 100,000 employees, after trialing the AI assistant and seeing early benefits.