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Microsoft Copilot
AI companion generates text, images, some mistakes
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Microsoft Copilot
Pros: Good integrations with other Microsoft products; AI-generated responses feature links to their online sources.
Cons: No built-in features for saving past chats; it's hard to redirect chats once obvious errors occur.
Bottom Line: A decent AI tool for making lists, generating images, and creating text—but don't forget to check for errors.
Copilot wasn't designed for education, but it's possible that teachers could use it as a starting point for some classroom activities. Its best feature may be that each AI-generated response includes a group of related internet links: A good critical thinking activity for your students could be to present them with the AI-generated text and the accompanying links and ask them to compare them. How well did the AI summarize the texts? Which of the links seem like reliable information? Which ones do you believe? Why, or why not?
You can use the chat features or prompt the tool to generate rubrics or lesson plans that you can tweak afterward. You might also use the tool's Designer feature to generate images to illustrate a lesson plan or slide deck.
Keep in mind that you can't save your past chats like you can in ChatGPT and other tools. Instead, take advantage of the sharing features to export generated text to PDFs, Word documents, or plain text files. If you're signed in to a Microsoft account and you have a paid Copilot subscription, you can create content and export it directly to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This can be great for creating a syllabus, generating graphs, or creating a new slide deck.
Be cautious when using the tool for searches related to topics that are prone to bias, like race, ethnicity, and economic class, to mention a few. For example, when prompted to provide images of rich people, the tool only displayed photos of ostensibly White men, until specifically asked to diversify the images. When it came to asking questions that would lead to controversial or offensive answers, Microsoft Copilot simply stated that it couldn't answer those types of questions and forced the conversation to be restarted. The tool is mostly powered by GPT-4 and DALL-E 3, along with Microsoft's own proprietary model.
Editor's note: Never input personal, sensitive, or confidential information into a generative AI model. Review the tool's data policy for specifics on how the data is stored and used. If there is ever any doubt about whether or not to enter particular information, do not include it. Be aware of privacy settings on your device that might be helpful. Keep in mind that these tools often don't have their own privacy settings.
Copilot is Microsoft's AI companion tool. You can use it in a web browser (including through a dedicated button in the Microsoft Edge browser) or through its iOS and Android app. The tool has two main interfaces: Copilot (for shorter chat-like conversations) and Notebook (for generating longer, more complex responses). Copilot has a series of built-in tools, including an image generator called Designer, a vacation planner, a cooking assistant, and a fitness trainer. Each AI-generated text response is followed by a group of links to related further learning, and there are sharing features for exporting chats as Word documents, PDFs, and plain text documents.
Paid subscriptions offer more opportunities to generate content directly in other Microsoft apps (like Word and PowerPoint) or to search and summarize content from other Microsoft apps (like an email thread in Outlook or a recorded video meeting in Teams). The tool has a limit of just a few questions unless you are signed in or using a paid Microsoft account.
Microsoft markets Copilot as "your AI companion," and it's a decent tool for generating images and generating text content. In some ways, it feels like a slightly more powerful search engine: Its standout feature may be the links included after each AI-generated response, though educators should always be cautious of accuracy. It also generates follow up questions. It's refreshing to get some context and sources for where these AI responses are coming from. Still, like ChatGPT and other AI tools, Copilot makes mistakes; sometimes those included links aren't from the most reliable online sources, and it's hard to redirect a chat once errors appear.
While the Microsoft website and YouTube channels contain tons of articles and how-to videos about using Copilot, they're not easily linked to from within the tool, and you may have to use Google (or Bing) to find those helpful tips. Plus, it's not immediately clear how useful Copilot could be for teachers. Most of the recommended prompts are more whimsical than helpful, and the limited capabilities for saving or sharing chats mean that there's little support for refining your prompts and improving what you create. Copilot wasn't built for learning, and it's not the easiest fit for classroom situations. When asked to generate a lesson plan, for example, the tool provides limited options for customization after the initial very basic plan is generated.
The bottom of the screen includes the warning "Copilot uses AI. Check for mistakes." That's good advice for this tool, and for all of the AI tools crowding this emerging space.
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