Microsoft’s Copilot Tools

Although ChatGPT has gotten most of the hype, there are other players in this space, and this number is likely to increase. Microsoft has several products, all based on OpenAI’s technology, and variations of the name ‘Copilot’.

Of most interest to education at the moment is Microsoft Copilot (formerly called Bing Chat), which is based on Open AI’s GPT-4 model. It’s a chat tool focused on searching for information and does have access to the internet. It takes your question, performs one or more web searches based on your question, and will then attempt to summarise and answer, giving references for the sites it uses.

Example of Microsoft Copilot generating MCQ Questions

Microsoft has also introduced Microsoft Copilot for 365 – a set of GenAI tools for Microsoft 365 (i.e. Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc). These are currently only available to institutions wishing to sign up a minimum of 300 users at $30 a month, and are not yet available in UCD.

Attribution (adapted):

Webb, M. (2024, January 25). A generative AI Primer. National centre for AI. ISC National Centre for AI Version 1.3. License: CC BY-NC-SA. Image of ChatGPT generating text removed. https://nationalcentreforai.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2024/01/02/generative-ai-primer/ 

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Are You AI Ready? Investigating AI tools in Higher Education - Faculty Guide Copyright © by SATLE Project Team 'Are You AI Ready?' University College Dublin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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