Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 2 Highlights: Microsoft unveils Copilot Pages, AI agents, Narrative Builder, and more

Based on customer feedback, Microsoft said that it is expanding the reach of its generative AI assistant to all its applications with Copilot Wave 2. Some of the new features that are coming to the suite of 365 apps are:

- Copilot in Excel: Uses AI for generating formulas, data visualization, conditional formatting, and more.

- Copilot in Excel with Python: Uses AI to leverage Python in Excel in order to output advanced analysis, such as forecasting and risk analysis, without the user having to write any code.

- Narrative Builder in PowerPoint: Produces an outline of a presentation draft based on a single prompt in minutes

- Copilot in Teams: The new update here is that Copilot will be able to create summaries of Teams meetings based on the actual meeting as well as conversations in the chat.

- Copilot in Outlook: Has a new ‘Prioritize my inbox’ feature that analyses and flags the most important emails in a user’s inbox while also summarising the emails.

- Copilot in Word: New ‘on-canvas start experience’ allows users to collaborate with Copilot inline on sections of their document.

- Copilot in OneDrive: Users can quickly leverage the AI assistant to find files in their OneDrive repository, generate summaries of these filed, and compare them with each other – all without the user having to open any of the OneDrive files.

Copilot can help you prioritise your inbox, and you can sort by priority based on the AI chatbot's analysis. You can teach Copilot which emails are top priority, designed to help you not miss what is important. Copilot in Outlook can suggest email responses and you can ask what it needs to be add.

Microsoft says that its new Narrative Builder feature looks to give users more control in making slide decks using Copilot. It can add speaker notes, add animations, and add slide transitions.

Copilot responses are 2x times faster, it has the world's best feedback loop. Copilot will also be powered by OpenAI's new o1 model, says Microsoft VP Jared Spataro.

The Microsoft 365 Copilot: Wave 2 is set to begin shortly. There's 5,000+ users on the LinkedIn live stream.

In March 2024, the Redmond-based tech giant hosted the 'Future of Work' event which saw the launch of Copilot for Microsoft 365. Bringing the generative AI assistant to the entire suite of 365 apps means that PowerPoint users are able to turn their ideas and concepts into a sharp presentation with simple commands in natural language. And in Excel, Copilot helps users unlock data insights, identify trends, and create professional-looking data visualisations. The company had also unveiled its Business Chat feature that works across all Microsoft 365 apps.

Five years after making its first billion-dollar investment in OpenAI, Microsoft officially recognised the startup behind ChatGPT as one of its contenders last month. This perhaps marks an important turning point in the relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft that seems to have evolved from strategic partners to competitors. Reports also suggest that the Satya Nadella-led firm is training a new, in-house AI language model large enough to compete with those from Alphabet’s Google and OpenAI.

The rumour mill is in full turn ahead of Microsoft’s ‘Wave 2’ event on Monday. Most of the buzz is around the possibility of Copilot being rebranded to further drive subscriptions and distinguish it from Copilot Pro, the consumer version of the company’s flagship AI assistant.

However, it looks like Copilot may not get a totally different name. Instead, the company may simply attach Microsoft 365 as a prefix to Copilot which means that Copilot for Sales could become Microsoft 365 Copilot for Sales, Copilot in Word could become Microsoft 365 Copilot in Word, so on and so forth.

Stay tuned to know more on what are the other expected changes coming to Microsoft Copilot products.

Even before the infamous Microsoft-Crowdstrike IT outage, issues that appeared to be linked to Bing’s API had prevented users from accessing the search capabilities of Copilot for a few hours in May this year. The outage had also affected ChatGPT, DuckDuckGo, and other platforms.

Microsoft has been constantly adding new AI features into Microsoft 365 since Copilot’s integration with the productivity suite in 2023. Some of the AI capabilities announced this year, so far, include:

- Copilot for Microsoft Word

- Copilot for Outlook

- AI-powered Copilot agents for businesses

- Team Copilot feature

- Copilot for Sales

- Copilot for Service

The software maker is expected to announce a bunch of new AI features for Copilot in Microsoft 365, as part of its efforts to push the AI offering among its business clients. Microsoft is also expected to unveil the latest developments related to Copilot Pro, its AI subscription for consumers. The event could also see Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announce a new name for Copilot to align with its focus on the business side of AI.