Artificial intelligence is one of the most important technologies in the world right now. After having taken the world by storm over the past couple of years, every company wants to integrate it into their business. And, Microsoft has given companies the perfect tool to do exactly that with Copilot.

Copilot for Microsoft 365 is a versatile and potent assistant that can help you with anything you need, throughout a range of Microsoft products. But, Copilot can often seem like magic for a lot of people — after all, how does it work? And what are the specifics of it? Can it do anything?

These are just some of the questions that are commonly asked about Copilot for Microsoft 365. In this article, we’re going to answer some of your burning questions, so you can know the ins and outs of Microsoft 365 Copilot and how it works.

How Does Copilot Work?

In simple terms, you type in a prompt and Copilot generates an answer to that prompt. That’s about how simple it is to use Copilot in any case, but the answer to how it works beyond that is more than just searching up the answer to your question.

Copilot is an artificial intelligence, but more importantly a living language model. It learns from the data that it’s fed, meaning that its intelligence comes from its training data and its ability to use that data to solve problems.

The training process is incredibly complex and takes lots of time, to ensure that responses are not only rich but also accurate and helpful — and is constantly ongoing. When you send Copilot a prompt, it uses its training and learned data to be able to generate output that seems like a human, using natural language.

Does Copilot learn and improve over time?

Copilot is constantly evolving and learning, and gains access to new training data all the time. The knowledge cut-off for the free version of Copilot — the date that Copilot in its current state stopped learning data — is April 2023, meaning that it won’t know anything that has happened since this date. However, this is constantly changing with new updates and innovations.

When it comes to improving its capabilities, Copilot is constantly being improved to be able to do more within the Microsoft 365 environment. There will be things that Copilot probably won’t ever be able to do — as we’ll discuss later — but the developers at Microsoft have been adding more and more to its capabilities and its ability to enhance the 365 ecosystem thoroughly over 2024.

What data does Copilot have access to?

As said previously, the knowledge cut-off for Copilot is April 2023, meaning that its training data is all from before that date. However, Microsoft Copilot can also search using Bing and extrapolate data from the internet through that.

This means that the data available to Copilot is anything accessible through Bing, technically, but is also dependent on its capabilities and whether it’s able to find that data through searching effectively.

What are the limitations of Copilot?

Copilot isn’t simply magic, and due to the limits of AI and how Copilot has been trained, there are a lot of limitations for Copilot. All AI has limitations, due to the physical limitations that technology has. It’s not a magical device and only works based on the current limitations of technology. Copilot does have its own limitations as a language model, though, that need to be considered.

Here are the main ones:

  • Copilot can only generate text based on the data it has access to: You can’t ask Copilot to generate based on things it doesn’t know about.
  • Copilot can sometimes generate factually incorrect text: This is known as hallucination.
  • Copilot can be repetitive: Because it’s trained on a dataset, Copilot can pick up and replicate patterns often, meaning that it can become repetitive.
  • Copilot can be biased: Because of the large dataset, Copilot can generate text that can be seen as biased or unfair.

These are the main major limitations of Microsoft Copilot and are vital to consider when using it. After all, like all AI, the model is only as good as the data it’s trained on, and — while Microsoft has generally trained it to be neutral — it can pick up biases or false information that would otherwise go unnoticed.

There are also specific technical limitations for Copilot, in which it can be unable to do some tasks in Microsoft 365 applications. This includes file size limitations, word limitations, thread size limitations, and so forth.

Also, scope is a massive part of this. Copilot’s scope means that it can only search in specific places, and should be considered — for example, Copilot for Microsoft Excel can only search in a table only, with no reference capabilities.

Can Copilot be customised for specific business needs?

Copilot can be customised for your business’s needs, through the utilisation of dedicated apps like Copilot Studio and plugins that you can use to enhance your experience. Copilot Studio is the best way to do this, as it allows you to design, develop, and deploy custom AI copilots tailored to your business needs in just a few clicks.

Custom agents are another example of how you can tailor Copilot to your needs. You can make agents that can automate tasks, provide support, generate content, and so much more.

How We Can Help

Microsoft Copilot for 365 can often feel like magic, and cause you to scratch your head, but these answers have hopefully provided clarity and helped you understand the ins and outs of Copilot for Microsoft 365.

If you’re looking to get started with Copilot for Microsoft 365 and need help implementing it into your business, reach out to us today. We’re here to help and will ensure you have everything you need to be able to use Copilot for Microsoft 365 successfully in your business.

Get in touch with us now and see how we can help.