3 Ways to Take Advantage of Microsoft’s Copilot in Windows

Many organizations are seeking opportunities to bring generative artificial intelligence to their employees with tools that integrate easily and securely into workflows. Copilot in Windows, new to Windows 11, is a multifaceted AI application that sits directly on the desktop and serves as Microsoft’s user experience (UX) for AI tools.

Here are three ways organizations can use Copilot as a gateway to AI.

Copilot in Windows helps users accomplish tasks across the operating system. For example, it can change settings to personalize the UX, extract information from a screenshot, create images and summarize content from the web. By integrating with various platforms, it accelerates workflows for a variety of day-to-day tasks.

Copilot also offers technical support, one area that many IT departments are excited about. Typically, even simple requests can generate help desk tickets that IT staffers must deal with. But with Copilot helping to answer questions and troubleshoot, organizations can redirect issues away from IT teams, freeing them up for higher-priority work.

Within Microsoft 365, organizations can leverage Copilot Studio to customize Copilot or create their own AI assistants. This is where we envision AI truly becoming a strategic asset from an enterprise perspective. For instance, an IT department could create a custom Copilot to proactively address its organization’s most common technical requests.

Giving users access to generative AI requires an organization to have confidence that its proprietary information won’t be used to train large-language models. When companies use Azure Active Directory credentials to access Copilot in Windows through a qualified Microsoft 365 license, they receive access to commercial data protection, which ensures that user and organization data are protected, and that prompts and responses are not saved.

In partnership with OpenAI, Microsoft leverages OpenAI’s LLM code running in Azure on a private instance of Azure OpenAI. Microsoft is the data controller, and this ensures that OpenAI does not have access to the models or the data processed by them.

Commercial data protection encrypts any prompts and other data entering the LLM, as well as the resulting responses. No one at Microsoft can see that data, the data isn’t retained, and it is not used or shared with anyone else. These protections ensure that proprietary information stays within an organization’s safe confines.

The Copilot for Microsoft 365 license includes another significant capability: direct integration between the Microsoft 365 tenant and the Copilot in Windows interface. Now, the generative AI assistant can work with information unique to the organization, while adhering to our existing privacy, security and compliance commitments to M365 commercial customers.  When a user submits a prompt, Copilot will check access permissions and then use the company’s data to return the appropriate answer, such as providing a specific document or answering questions about the organizational chart.

Copilot is a great first step for every organization’s AI journey. Windows 11 gets employees comfortable interacting with an AI assistant, providing a solid foundation to build on as AI capabilities continue to grow. Add in Copilot for Microsoft 365, Azure OpenAI or a custom Copilot, and the organization has multiple ways to leverage AI as a strategic asset moving forward.

Story by Rob McGilvrey