What Is Microsoft Copilot?

When you open Microsoft Copilot, you’re greeted with its tagline, “Your everyday AI companion.” And that really sums up everything Copilot has to offer. It’s meant to be a tool or a collaborator to help you optimize your tasks or life with you. Moreover, it’s a great tool for assisting you with tasks, answering questions, generating content, and even creating images. 

That said, your AI companion is only as good as your instructions. Whether Microsoft Copilot is worth it still depends on how specific your prompts are. 

Which Version Of Copilot Is For You?

There are different versions of Copilot ranging from its free language model to assisting you with your tasks in Teams, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel, and other Microsoft 365 apps. Today we’ll talk about its free version because that’s the most accessible. 

To access Microsoft Copilot, simply enter https://copilot.microsoft.com. If you’re using Microsoft Edge, Copilot is already integrated there. All you have to do is open a new tab, then type in a question or search query and hit ‘Get Started’. 

Is It Important to Log in with Your Outlook Account

Short answer, yes. Microsoft Copilot is still a powerful tool even without you logging in, but there are minute advantages if you do. 

Logging in to Copilot means:

• Get access to Recent Chats: Your previous conversations and topics with Copilot will be saved to your account.
• Have better AI Copilot Plugins: Copilot becomes a better AI companion with plug-ins to help you find better plane tickets, compare prices from thousands of online stores, and more. 
• Earn rewards and gift cards: Use Microsoft Copilot just like you would every day or complete challenges to earn points. You can also do daily challenges to rack up more rewards. 

Why Microsoft Copilot Is Worth It Compared to ChatGPT & Google Gemini

We’d like to say it’s subjective, but there are key differences that make Copilot our go-to AI tool. Let’s first talk about GPT-4. GPT-4 stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer 4. In simpler terms, it’s more capable than the common GPT-3.5, which ChatGPT and other AI language models use for non-paying users. 

Copilot has Free GPT-4 Access

For starters, MS Copilot already has GPT-4 enabled, whereas ChatGPT requires a monthly subscription to get GPT-4 access. Meanwhile, Gemini doesn’t use GPT-4 but uses its own advanced AI model. 

This means your access to information is limited to January 2022 only when using ChatGPT for free. Based on our testing, it’s also prone to not understanding complex questions or prompts. Copilot and Gemini are much more capable of accessing up-to-date information since they can search the web for information. 

The Responses are Visual and Comprehensive 

Copilot strikes a balance between giving its users images of the subject they’re asking about and where the information is coming from. Simply clicking on the underlined or highlighted texts will bring you to where it took the information from. Even for a simple question or query, Copilot will still give you links at the bottom of its response. This also means Copilot gives you a good starting point for your research and makes it intuitive to verify the information. 

ChatGPT’s free version is out of the question here. In our testing, Gemini sometimes gave you a picture of the subject and sometimes didn’t. Moreover, you still need to click on the Google icon to verify where it got its information. 

MS Copilot is Intuitive for Conversations and Searching

After Copilot’s responses, it will also give you three possible questions you will likely ask. This feature makes it easier to find more information without typing another question or prompt. Moreover, Copilot lets you choose different conversation styles. In practice, though, their three styles affect their responses in terms of accuracy and overall tone. We’ll discuss this later in the blog. 

Gemini doesn’t offer follow-up questions, so you must type your next queries yourself. Moreover, it doesn’t let you assign a specific conversation style. Instead, you have the option to modify the tone of each response. 

Diving Deeper into Copilot’s Three Conversation Styles

As we have previously mentioned, MS Copilot has three conversation styles that affect the response you get. We also talked about what makes Copilot our go-to AI companion. That’s because from the onset of the conversation, we can tailor the results and get better responses from it. Here’s what we found out and what each style is great at:

More Creative

The Creative style works best for poems, jokes, or anything that requires a casual response. In this conversation style, Copilot will use more adjectives, similes, and other nuances that add flair to its responses. It will continue to search the internet for information on your specified topic. However, based on our testing, it tends to rely on its existing knowledge base, citing online sources when necessary.

More Precise

If you want specific and factual information, use the Precise conversation style. In this style, Copilot would find information about a topic from various publications and studies online. This tool is great for proofreading and fact-checking essays, articles, or studies. Moreover, Copilot will use fewer adjectives and instead be more straightforward, giving you links and detailed summaries. 

More Balanced

Copilot shines as an advanced search engine in the Balanced conversation style. This style strikes a balance (no pun intended) between being conversational and giving you substantial information about your desired topic. 

Protip: As we mentioned before, the value of Microsoft Copilot depends on how specific you are with its prompts. If you’re unsure of the kind of result you’re looking for, try giving Copilot the same prompt for each conversation style. 

Why MS Copilot is Great For Everyday Users

When you open Copilot, the main element that will attract your attention is its premade prompts for various things. It varies from asking for help or recommendations for mundane tasks to professional-level prompts like asking Copilot to write a code with you.

Copilot is Tailored to Get your Desired Results

To our right, we have Copilot GPTs. Essentially, they’re language models specifically designed to help you with a specific field or task. Depending on your goals, you can ask it to create images for you, plan a vacation, or even create an optimized workout routine. 

Copilot’s Notebook Lets You Enter More Information

The Notebook function works the same way as the main screen, except this time, you have a 16,000-character limit instead of 4,000. Copilot's possibilities are broader, as it allows you to paste an essay, the contents of a document, and more. 

Moreover, you can give Copilot more nuanced or longer prompts to get you started on a project or help you with an outline. In this example, we asked Copilot to help us outline a huge project plan involving many people. 

After this project plan, we can add more information, such as the Project Name, to help Copilot build this plan further. Based on the additional information that we gave it, it will then take its previous response one step further, getting us closer to our desired result. 

Overall, Copilot’s Notebook is great because it allows you to see changes in real time, making it worth our attention compared to other AI companion tools. 

Conclusion

Microsoft has outdone themselves this time. Copilot has been a great tool for us not just on the job but also in improving our lives. As it gets more features in the future, we’re sure to be the first to utilize its capabilities. 

If you also agree that Microsoft Copilot is worth your attention, check out our video here. Get the most of Copilot by learning about:

• Crafting better prompts
• Learning more about its capabilities and limitations
• And more!

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