AI for staff: Microsoft Copilot

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 Copilot are correct and work.

Read PDF files and web content

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. However, you must permit Copilot to access your document to make this work. Do this:

1. Go to Settings by clicking on the three dots at the top right.
2. The easiest way here is to search for the Copilot settings.
3. Make sure you tick the box allowing Copilot to access the content you have open in the browser.

Open your PDF to give Copilot access

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.

Update: Microsoft regularly updates the look and functionality of its services - now you can also choose to open a file directly in the chat if you use copilot.microsoft.com instead of the sidebar. It still works to open documents as described above.

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.

But most importantly, because Copilot is under our agreement with Microsoft, all data is handled securely in accordance with Microsoft Enterprise data protection. This, combined with the fact that none of the data entered is used to train the underlying model, makes it our recommended tool for generative AI.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions.