It is okay to be wary of new technology. Many people feel that way about artificial intelligence, or AI. You might worry that it’s too complicated or that it could even affect your job. For a long time, you may have seen Microsoft’s AI tool, Copilot, appearing in all your apps—from Windows to Notepad—and felt it was more of a bother than a help. The feeling that AI is being added everywhere can be overwhelming.
However, sometimes giving something a second chance can lead to a pleasant surprise. Copilot is more than just a chatbot that answers questions; it has specific tools designed to make your daily tasks easier and faster. After moving past the initial annoyance and deciding to explore its capabilities, many users find that some of its features are genuinely helpful. This is not about letting AI take over, but about learning how to use it as a personal assistant to improve your own work.
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Surprising Ways Copilot Can Help Your Daily Workflow
You might be surprised to learn how Copilot can fit into your routine. Instead of being an intrusive gadget, it can become a tool that you control to save time and effort. Here are a few features that have proven to be surprisingly useful.
Get the Main Points from Long Web Articles
Reading long articles online can take a lot of time, especially when you are researching a topic and need to get to the point quickly. Copilot is built into the Microsoft Edge browser and can help with this.
How it helps: Copilot can read a web page or a PDF document and create a short summary for you. It pulls out the main ideas and lists them with bullet points, so you can understand the article’s core message in a fraction of the time. This is perfect for students, researchers, or anyone who needs to process a lot of information.
How to use it: When you have an article open in Edge, click the Copilot icon in the top-right corner. In the panel that opens, you can ask it to “summarize this page”. The AI will scan the text and provide a summary with references to where it found the information in the article.
A word of advice: While this feature is a great time-saver, remember that a summary is, by nature, incomplete. The AI might miss some key details or nuances, which can be especially important in news articles or detailed reports. It’s always a good idea to skim the full article if the topic is critical.
Write Emails More Quickly in Outlook
Writing emails can feel like a chore, especially when you have many to get through. Copilot can help you get started by creating a first draft for you, which users have found helpful for automating content generation.
How it helps: Whether you need to write to a company about a product or send a formal message to a colleague, Copilot in Outlook can compose a draft based on a simple instruction. This helps you get your main points down, saving you time and mental energy. According to one survey, 64% of early users said Copilot helped them spend less time processing email.
How to use it: In the new Outlook app, start a new email and fill in the recipient and subject. In the body of the email, you can use the “Draft with Copilot” feature. Just tell it what you want the email to say (e.g., “Write a polite email asking for an update on my order”).
A word of advice: AI-generated text can sometimes sound a bit robotic or use more words than necessary. Copilot is no different. Think of its draft as a starting point. You will likely need to edit the text to make it sound more like you and to add specific details. However, it does the heavy lifting of getting the words on the page.
Improve Your Writing in Microsoft Word
Even for professional writers, there are days when the words just don’t flow right. You might struggle with phrasing or worry about grammar. While tools like Grammarly are helpful, Copilot in Word offers another way to refine your text.
How it helps: If you have a sentence or paragraph that doesn’t sound right, Copilot can offer several rewritten versions. This is incredibly useful for overcoming writer’s block or simply finding a better way to express an idea. Microsoft’s research shows that 85% of users find that Copilot helps them get to a good first draft faster.
How to use it: Highlight the text you want to improve in your Word document. Right-click on it, and you will see an option to “Rewrite with Copilot.” A panel will appear, showing different suggestions for your highlighted text. You can click through the options and choose the one that works best.
A word of advice: This feature is a powerful editing assistant, but it’s best used on small sections of text, like a sentence or a paragraph. Avoid using it to rewrite an entire document at once, as you might lose your personal voice and style. The goal is to enhance your writing, not replace it.
Find Information About Images
Sometimes you have a picture and want to know more about it. It could be a screenshot of a product, a photo of a landmark, or even a picture of a plant you can’t identify. Copilot can analyze images and give you information about them.
How it helps: This feature, sometimes called Copilot Vision, turns the AI into a visual search engine. You can upload any image, and Copilot will try to identify what’s in it and provide related details. For example, you could upload a screenshot of a computer part and get information about its specifications and what it’s used for.
How to use it: Open the Copilot interface on your computer. Look for an icon that lets you add an image (it often looks like a small picture or a plus sign). You can then choose to upload an image from your computer or take a new screenshot. After you submit the image, Copilot will give you a text-based response with what it found.
A word of advice: The results can vary. For common objects, landmarks, or products, it is often very accurate. For more obscure or personal photos, its analysis might be more general. However, it can be a fun and useful way to learn more about the world around you, one picture at a time.
Copilot Can Be a Productive Partner
After some initial reluctance, it’s clear that Copilot can be a genuinely useful tool when you know how to use it. It can help with research, writing, and even visual searches. Its real power lies in its ability to streamline everyday tasks, saving you time and allowing you to focus on the more important parts of your work. One study found that users of GitHub Copilot, a version for programmers, accepted nearly 30% of code suggestions, leading to increased productivity. Another study projected a 33-36% time reduction for coding-related tasks. While these are specific to coding, they show the potential of AI assistants to make a real difference.
The journey with AI is a personal one. You don’t have to use every feature, but by exploring its capabilities, you might find a few that make your day just a little bit easier. The key is to see it not as a threat, but as an assistant that you direct. As the technology continues to evolve, it’s worth checking in on its new features from time to time—you might be pleasantly surprised by what you find.