Microsoft announced on Friday the addition of the Copilot Key to keyboards running Windows PCs, to launch its AI-powered Windows Copilot feature and help increase productivity with real-time suggestions and completions.
This button will replace either the menu or right control key on keyboard layouts that support it and should appear on PCs from Microsoft ecosystem partners from this month until springtime, including forthcoming Surface devices.
What is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft Copilot is an AI feature available within Edge and other apps to save users time on tasks such as writing documents, making PowerPoint slides, summarising emails, answering customer service inquiries or asking a natural language chatbot questions.
Copilot requests are processed through AI models in the cloud and sent back to user devices as soon as the responses have been generated.
Copilot is available for many Microsoft apps such as Word, Outlook, OneNote, Teams and Excel. It can produce PowerPoint slides and draft emails quickly and generate PowerPoint slides to accompany those drafts; help writers improve tone and structure in their writing; as well as summarise long email threads quickly.
At work, AI Assistant can answer questions and create meeting notes and action items in Teams; it can transcribe and summarize calls made on Microsoft Phone; work with GitHub to accelerate software development; integrate with Viva Sales which streamlines selling processes – all functions that AI can help with.
How does the key work?
Microsoft and PC makers will offer keyboards with a new key that lets users quickly access Copilot. It replaces either the menu key, or in certain instances, right-hand Alt key on keyboards.
On most keyboards, this button labelled Copilot for Windows will launch GPT-4-based AI assistant software that can assist with tasks such as writing documents and emails, searching the web, organizing files, launching applications, answering queries and organizing screenshots.
Copilot differs from Windows key in that it acts solely as a launch point and doesn’t combine various keys for shortcuts; unlike its functionality, which opened up Start menu items and combined with different keys for shortcuts, Copilot serves only one function and will become available this month through spring on all Surface devices – reflecting Microsoft’s push towards AI PCs with personalized experiences on-device AI experiences.
What will I be able to do with Copilot?
Copilot will operate across Microsoft 365 apps such as Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, Business Chat, and Excel. When called up within a Word document for example, Copilot can suggest changes to text or edit sentences and improve writing style and even create a first draft. Furthermore, meetings become more creative and productive by suggesting designs to bring ideas to life more vividly and summarizing whiteboard content more efficiently.
Copilot will also prove useful for developers, providing advice and suggestions regarding boilerplate code and common idioms. Klimenchenko presented himself with the challenge of writing an entire app without recourse to Google or Stack Overflow solutions and only relying on Copilot for advice – within one week he had created a working prototype!
Copilot requires three key pieces of information in order to work: your Microsoft Entra ID (or an Azure Active Directory account configured in the Admin Center), OneDrive account, and Office 365 subscription. Copilot will start rolling out in Windows 11 this year as part of a free update; enterprise customers will gain access starting November 1. In addition, all Office 365 subscribers can use its app launcher access.
Will I be able to control Copilot?
Microsoft claims Copilot will be capable of carrying out various tasks, from creating documents and editing and translating content, to answering user inquiries and turning on PC features as well as helping find files.
Developers will find this tool capable of producing code and reviewing it for errors, as well as highlighting areas where changes must be made and suggesting new lines or functions. A recent GitHub benchmark demonstrated it had success generating Python functions 43% of the time on its first attempt!
Copilot will be included as part of Windows 11 Fall 2023 update and compatible apps will support it, though certain features will only be accessible to larger enterprise customers; Copilot for GitHub requires subscription and isn’t part of free Office 365 plans; IT administrators will have control over how Copilot is utilized and accessed by employees within their organization.
