Microsoft Copilot is an AI assistant made by Microsoft that answers questions, drafts and summarizes text, generates images, and increasingly acts on a user's behalf inside Microsoft's own software. What sets it apart from most general-purpose assistants is not a unique model but its placement: Copilot is woven directly into the operating system and productivity software hundreds of millions of people already use, rather than living only as a separate destination a person has to seek out.
What Microsoft Copilot is
Copilot is best understood as a layer Microsoft has spread across its existing products rather than a single app. The same Copilot brand covers a free consumer chat assistant reachable from a web browser or the Windows taskbar, a voice- and vision-capable companion inside the Edge browser, and a paid assistant embedded in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams that can read, write, and summarize a user's own documents and email. All of them share the Copilot name and a common design: a conversational interface, built on a large language model, that a person directs in plain language.
This page covers the consumer- and Windows-facing Microsoft Copilot — the assistant most people mean when they search “Microsoft Copilot.” It is a distinct product from GitHub Copilot, Microsoft's earlier, developer-focused tool that autocompletes and explains code inside a software editor. Both are owned by Microsoft and share a name chosen for the same reason — an assistant riding alongside the user, like a co-pilot — but they were built for different jobs and different audiences, and neither substitutes for the other.
Who makes it and when it launched
Microsoft Copilot descends from Bing Chat, a chatbot Microsoft added to its Bing search engine and Edge browser starting in February 2023, built on early GPT-4-class technology from OpenAI. Demand was immediate enough that Microsoft ran it behind a waitlist at first, opening it to the public that May. Over the following months Microsoft extended the same underlying assistant into Windows and into Microsoft 365, using several overlapping names for the various surfaces.
Microsoft consolidated that sprawl at its Ignite conference in November 2023, announcing that Bing Chat and its related experiences would be renamed Copilot. The rebranded product reached general availability under the single Microsoft Copilot name on December 1, 2023. A dedicated consumer subscription, Copilot Pro, followed in January 2024, offering faster performance and earlier access to new models; Microsoft has since folded that plan into a broader consumer bundle, described below. Microsoft's roughly decade-long, multibillion-dollar partnership with OpenAI has underpinned Copilot since the beginning, though Microsoft has more recently started introducing its own in-house models into parts of the product as well.
What it's good at
Copilot's clearest advantage is depth of integration with software Microsoft already controls. Inside Windows, Copilot sits on the taskbar and can be invoked without opening a separate application. Inside Edge, it can summarize the page a user is looking at, compare open tabs, or read a document aloud. Inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook, the paid version of Copilot can draft a document from a prompt, build a first-pass analysis in a spreadsheet, turn notes into slides, or summarize and draft replies to an email thread — work that requires reading a user's own files, something a general assistant without that integration cannot do as directly.
Copilot is also multimodal in practical, everyday ways. It generates images through a built-in tool called Designer, can hold a spoken conversation through a voice mode, and, through a feature called Copilot Vision, can look at what is on a screen or webpage and answer questions about it in real time. For a user already inside the Microsoft ecosystem — a Windows PC, an Edge browser, a Microsoft 365 subscription — Copilot is typically the AI assistant requiring the least friction to reach, since it is already present rather than something to install or sign up for separately.
Where it falls short
Copilot's history as an assembly of several rebranded and merged products has left its naming and tier structure genuinely confusing: a shopper researching “Microsoft Copilot” will encounter the free consumer app, the retired Copilot Pro plan, Microsoft 365 Copilot for businesses, and Copilot Chat as separate offerings with overlapping capabilities, which is harder to navigate than a single-product competitor's pricing page.
Like other assistants built on large language models, Copilot can state incorrect information fluently and confidently, and its knowledge of very recent events depends on live web search rather than built-in certainty. Its most distinctive strength — deep access to a user's Windows environment and Microsoft 365 files — is also a data-sensitivity tradeoff that some organizations weigh carefully before turning it on broadly. And outside the Microsoft ecosystem, Copilot offers less obvious benefit: a user who does not use Windows, Edge, or Microsoft 365 gains little from Copilot's core advantage and may find other assistants equally or more capable for plain conversation.
| Maker | Microsoft |
|---|---|
| Launched | February 2023, as Bing Chat; renamed Copilot in November 2023; general availability under the Microsoft Copilot name on December 1, 2023. |
| Access | Windows taskbar, Edge browser, Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams), a standalone web app, and mobile apps for iOS and Android. |
| Underlying models | Mainly OpenAI's GPT family, most recently GPT-5.6, under Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI; Microsoft has begun introducing its own in-house MAI models into some Copilot experiences as well. |
| Multimodal | Yes — text chat, image generation through Designer, voice conversation, and screen or webpage understanding through Copilot Vision. |
| Free tier | Available for chat and everyday questions, with a limited amount of daily image generation and without deep Microsoft 365 file integration. |
| Paid tier | The standalone Copilot Pro consumer plan has been retired; its features now sit inside Microsoft 365 Premium, priced near $20 per month. Businesses license Microsoft 365 Copilot separately, on top of a qualifying Microsoft 365 plan, at a per-user monthly rate. |
| Context handling | Supports long conversations and, for paid users, reference to a growing set of personal and organizational context; exact context-window size is not consistently published and varies by surface and plan. |
| Best known for | Being the AI assistant built directly into Windows, Edge, and Microsoft 365, rather than a separate destination a user has to visit. |
Frequently asked questions
What is Microsoft Copilot?
Microsoft Copilot is a general-purpose AI assistant made by Microsoft. It answers questions, drafts and summarizes text, generates images, and can see and reason about a webpage, document, or screen. It is built into Windows, the Edge browser, the Microsoft 365 apps, a web app, and mobile apps, and it draws mainly on OpenAI's models alongside Microsoft's own in-house models.
Is Microsoft Copilot the same as GitHub Copilot?
No. Microsoft Copilot is a general-purpose assistant for chat, writing, research, and Microsoft 365 tasks. GitHub Copilot is a separate product, launched earlier, that helps developers write and complete code inside a software editor such as Visual Studio Code. Both are made by Microsoft and share the Copilot name, but they are different products built for different audiences.
Who makes Microsoft Copilot and when did it launch?
Microsoft makes Copilot. It began in February 2023 as Bing Chat, a chatbot added to the Bing search engine and Edge browser. Microsoft renamed it Copilot at its Ignite conference in November 2023, and the rebranded product reached general availability under the Microsoft Copilot name on December 1, 2023.
Is Microsoft Copilot free?
A free version is available for chat, everyday questions, and a limited amount of image generation, with no sign-in required for basic use. Deeper integration with Microsoft 365 apps, higher usage limits, and priority access to newer models require a paid plan, currently sold to consumers as part of Microsoft 365 Premium and to businesses as a separate Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on license.
What AI model powers Microsoft Copilot?
Copilot has mainly run on OpenAI's GPT model family, under Microsoft's long-running partnership with OpenAI, most recently GPT-5.6. Microsoft has also begun building its own in-house MAI models and is introducing them into some Copilot experiences alongside OpenAI's models, so the exact model behind a given answer can vary and continues to shift over time.
Where can I use Microsoft Copilot?
Copilot is built into Windows, accessible from the taskbar; into the Edge browser as a sidebar and voice assistant; into Microsoft 365 apps including Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams; through a standalone web app; and through mobile apps for iOS and Android.
More from highlevel.ai
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