Microsoft has released some information about what you’ll need to get their AI tools (called Copilot) when they are eventually released. Copilot is Microsoft’s name for their upcoming AI tools integrated into Office apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook) plus other services like Teams.
As with all Microsoft’s Copilot announcements, it’s a strange mix. The company talks about Copilot in the present tense, as if it’s an existing option for customers. Seemingly a marketing strategy to give the appearance that Microsoft is leading in the AI race over Google and others.
When necessary, Microsoft switches to the, more accurate, future tense since Copilot isn’t yet available even for paying Preview customers.
High-end Office plans
Copilot will only be available for the higher priced Microsoft 365 plans, E3 or E5 license plus an Azure Active Directory account. The wording is vague (deliberately) and it seems an extra paid add-on will be needed to get Copilot.
As a footnote Microsoft says “For small and medium business (SMB) customers, Microsoft 365 Business Standard or Business Premium will be eligible base licenses”. It’s not clear what that means but perhaps there’ll be a Copilot add-on available for those two plans but not ‘Business Basic’.
Each installation must be on the Current or Monthly Enterprise Channel.
Copyright
There are two copyright issues with AI generated content and Microsoft has explained their position on both.
Microsoft does not claim any copyright or ownership over Copilot made content. In other words, you can use text/images made by their AI without further payment to Microsoft. That’s similar to the rights given for other MS supplied content like stock images, icons etc.
But “Microsoft does not make a determination on whether the content created by Copilot experiences is copyright-protected.” meaning it’s up to each customer to determine the copyright status of any Copilot AI content they use.
Microsoft’s legal caution is understandable as they note “… copyright and other laws regarding ownership vary by jurisdiction,”
Privacy
Microsoft is at pains to assure customers that their AI system works entirely on Microsoft servers and, for the most part, data is contained within each region. In particular the EUDB (EU Data Boundary).
Copilot is separate from the OpenAI service upon which it’s based. All the data (e.g. Large Language Model) is on Microsoft servers.
Each customer/organisations data is used to inform Copilot’s results; emails, documents, meetings, contacts, calendars, chats etc. If more data is saved on Microsoft servers (Teams, Exchange Server, SharePoint etc.), then Copilot has more information to work with and, in theory, will give better, more relevant results.
Online
Pretty obviously, you’ll have to be online. Copilot is a cloud service with all the AI smarts running on Microsoft’s cloud servers.
Once you have the text or image on your computer, you can copy and paste it while offline.
Technical requirements
IT admins might want to look at the technical requirements even if they don’t intend to use Copilot immediately. The Microsoft 365 network connectivity principles help improve the speed and reliability of connections generally.
All these latest announcements only apply to Microsoft 365 Business and Enterprise customers. There’s nothing for Microsoft 365 consumer (Personal or Home) nor Education plans, though it’s a reasonable bet that Microsoft 365 software (not Office 2021 etc) will be necessary.
What Microsoft 365 Copilot can really do for you – not just the hype
AI images coming to PowerPoint plus more CoPilot news
Use Microsoft’s AI magic now – don’t wait for Copilot
OneNote is getting Microsoft CoPilot
