Copilot is a Microsoft feature that maximizes the performance of various Microsoft products, including Word, Excel, Teams, and many others. It uses the OpenAI GPT-4 language model to perform tasks to improve user productivity, reduce resource consumption, and optimize overall processes.
Meaning and history
In 2019, Microsoft invested heavily in OpenAI, a research company founded by Elon Musk and Sam Altman that sought to develop artificial intelligence (AI) that works for the benefit of humanity.
In 2020, OpenAI developed Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3), a neural network-like language model that relied on machine learning to accurately process and reproduce human language. This technology was later applied to the Generative Pre-trained Chat Transducer (ChatGPT), a generative chatbot with artificial intelligence. And in the same, 2023, the new product was created — Microsoft Copilot.
Copilot is a product from Microsoft that allows you to perform AI-based tasks specific to the application in which you access it. For example, in Microsoft Word, you can instruct Copilot to create content based on a specific topic or summarize content within a document, and many more such actions.
Microsoft Copilot was first introduced in March 2023, and in November of the same year, all of Microsoft’s artificial intelligence-based products, including the famous chatbot and the Bing search engine, were unified under the Copilot brand, followed by a global redesign of its visual identity.
Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams can be used to write text, analyze numerical data, create new designs, summarize emails, chat discussions and more. During the presentation, Microsoft showed that AI can fulfill various queries in a matter of seconds – whereas humans typically take half an hour or more to do so.
Copilot’s main goal is to upgrade the Windows experience for its users by simplifying, suggesting, finding and solving problems presented in the form of text/voice prompts or contextual scripts.
As a reminder, in February 2023, Microsoft unveiled its updated Edge browser and also introduced a powerful neural network in the form of a chatbot to Bing. Bing is the AI chat bot, which can answer your questions, search for information, and create content. Was created by Microsoft a little later than its main competitor, ChatGPT, but has an updated knowledge base that is constantly being added to.
The bot is positioned as a universal tool with an extensive field of application, but its main task is to answer search queries with the help of a neural network better than a standard search engine. The product will help to write texts, collect ideas and facts from various sources.
In May 2023, Microsoft significantly improved the functionality of Bing, making it even more attractive to users. New features include saving chat history, exporting correspondence in various formats, including a PDF file, and increasing the size of a single message for a chatbot from two to four thousand characters.
What is Copilot?
Copilot is the name of an artificial intelligence tool integrated with Microsoft 365 applications such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Teams, etc. At the end of 2023, the famous Bing chat bot created by Microsoft was also rebranded as Copilot.
In terms of visual identity, Microsoft Copilot follows the corporate style of the company, but at the same time looks super futuristic and stylish, perfectly reflecting the progressive concept of the product, it’s “new generation” approach and purpose.
2023
The original Copilot logo, introduced by Microsoft in March 2023, was executed in the same blue color palette, as the Bing Chat logo, and their shapes were quite similar, with just one main difference, if the Bing logo looked like a ribbon, bent as a stylized lowercase letter “B”, the Copilot blue ribbon in gradients, formed a smooth and cool hexagon.
2023 – Today
The redesign of the Copilot logo, which happened in November 2023, has adopted a new color palette, and modified the shape of the original emblem. The hexagon got its edges wavy, and the ribbon — much wider than on the blue hexagon. The color palette got extended and now consists of rainbow gradients, with the bright blue stroke on top of the figure. This is how the designers modernized the corporate Microsoft color palette, adding smooth color transitions and adding new, brighter shades in order to reflect the progressiveness of the new program.
Font and color
The official Copilot logo has no lettering on it, and only consists of an abstract volumetric emblem, executed in a gradient multicolor palette. It has all the main Microsoft colors in it — red, blue, green, and yellow — but with a generous addition of new shades, from orange to purple. The top part of the emblem uses cold tones, blue and purple, which get warmer to the bottom, meeting in an orangy-red section. It makes the emblem look very smooth and intense, perfectly representing the purpose and essence of the new product.