AI for staff: Microsoft Copilot
Microsoft Copilot (previously called Bing Chat Enterprise) is an AI-powered chat tool from Microsoft. The service is available in a preview version that is included at no extra cost in KI’s license for Microsoft 365, and you can access it easily by logging in to the web browser.
With Copilot, you can use natural language to get help with various work-related tasks such as generating text and images, analyzing data, summarizing documents, writing code, and much more. The collective name for all this is generative AI, and this article attempts to both inspire and perhaps also problematize the subject somewhat.
Below are some practical examples of how to use large AI language models.
Microsoft's new Copilot app
Microsoft has recently launched a new mobile app for Copilot. Your KI ID gives you access to Copilot in your browser or through the Edge sidebar - you cannot access the protected KI instance of Copilot through the mobile app at this time.
Summarize and analyze texts
AI language models are often used to summarize longer texts for different purposes. Examples of this can be to:
- Quickly get an overview of the content of a longer document.
- Generate a popular science summary of your text.
- Get suggestions on how to improve the language in a text.
- Translate texts.
Copilot can be used to analyze the text you have open in the web browser (see below for a guide on how to permit Copilot to do this). If you want to analyze a text on your computer, the suggestion is to save it as a PDF file and then open it in the web browser. Two simple examples of how to create a popular science summary of a text are to write in the chat:
Write a popular science summary in English.
Write a popular science summary of about 1000 characters.
Ideas and inspiration
One area of use for Copilot can be to find new ideas and suggestions for more everyday chores such as cooking or travelling. Copilot can also help with imagining hypothetical scenarios more freely. Some examples:
Write a short story where the main character is an ageing astronaut who decides to make one last trip to space.
Give me recipes for Thai food without coriander.
Suggest things to do if I only have two hours in London.
Find gaps in existing research area
Finding gaps in research is often time-consuming. Copilot can be a little help along the way. However, you must have relatively good prior knowledge in the area to evaluate the answers. You can, of course, also ask the service to list gaps:
My research area is fluid dynamics. What gaps are there in that area?
You can get good suggestions here, but to put more flesh on the bone, you can ask Copilot to list five research reports within one of the suggested gaps:
My speciality area within fluid dynamics is contact angle on droplet generation in a T-crossing microfluidic system. Please give me five research reports on that.
You can also ask Copilot to explain if there are questions within a research area where there are divided opinions:
My research area is fluid dynamics. Are there any controversies in that area?
You can also ask if there are limitations in existing research or if there are no publications at all within a particular area. But again, it requires that you already have a fairly good knowledge of the area.
Write code
Copilot can be used to write and analyze program code. It can be helpful to:
- Save time by letting Copilot write code.
- Illustrate with example code how to use a particular technology.
- Understand and document what existing code does.
- Identify bugs in the given code.
For example, you can write:
Write an algorithm in Python to validate a Swedish social security number.
Write an example in R for extracting demographic data from Statistics Sweden’s open data PxWeb API4.
Of course, you have to check yourself that the results from Copilit are correct and work.
Settings and practical tips
The recommended web browser for getting the most out of Copilot is Microsoft Edge, as the service is built directly into the web browser. Edge is also available as an app for mobile devices.
To access Copilot, click on the blue-green icon at the top right. This opens a sidebar where it should say “Protected” with green text at the top. The green text indicates that you are logged into KI’s instance of Microsoft 365 and that no data leaves our environment. If you do not see the green text, it indicates that you are not logged in to Edge and that you need to do so by going to copilot.microsoft.com.
At the top of the sidebar, there are two options: chat and compose (chat and write in Swedish). There is some overlap between what the different functions can do, but basically, chat is intended for quick information search, while compose helps you create content from scratch.
Example of a question in chat mode:
Compare the design of the five tallest buildings in the world.
Example of question in compose mode:
Write a limerick about a man who lost his hat.
Read PDF files
A significant advantage of using Copilot directly in Microsoft Edge is that you can summarize, for example, a PDF file that is open in the main window. To make this work, however, you must permit Copilot to access your document. Do this:
Open your PDF to give Copilot access
With these settings in place, you can start using Copilot to read and interpret your PDF.
In order for Copilot to read your PDF, it must first be opened in the active tab in Edge - you can do this by dragging the file into the tab list at the top of the application, or by right-clicking on the file, selecting "Open with" and choosing Edge.
Temperature
An additional setting you can experiment with is called temperature in AI contexts, i.e. how much “imagination” your chatbot should be allowed to show. This setting is under the main heading, “Chat”, in the sidebar.
When you want to summarize an opened document in the web browser, the result is best with the more precise option in our experience.
Conclusion and contact
The IT Research support function at the IT Office is responsible for this page. We often get questions about different applications of AI tools and requests for various services. Often, we can refer to Copilot, which covers many of the expressed needs. That is the reason for creating this page, which can offer a simple introduction to the possibilities of Copilot.
Above all: since Copilot is within the framework of our agreement with Microsoft, all data is protected and does not leave KI in any way - this makes it the primary choice among all available tools for generative AI today.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions.