Microsoft Copilot: What It Is and How to Use It (2026 Beginner’s Guide)

Microsoft Copilot is Microsoft's AI assistant, built on OpenAI's GPT-5 models, integrated into Windows, the Edge browser, and the Microsoft 365 apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams). It comes in a free version (AI chat with web search), a Pro version (about €22 a month), and a Microsoft 365 Copilot version (about €30 per user a month) that works inside company documents. You use it by typing requests in natural language, the way you would talk to a colleague.

Microsoft Copilot is the artificial intelligence assistant built by Microsoft. It is a conversational system that understands requests in natural language and helps write text, analyze data, summarize documents, create presentations, and answer questions, drawing on the web in real time as well.

Under the hood, Copilot uses OpenAI's GPT-5 models with an automatic routing system (model routing): for simple requests it picks a fast model, for complex ones a more powerful one, with no need for the user to select anything. It is the same family of models that powers ChatGPT, packaged inside the Microsoft ecosystem.

The difference that matters for businesses is exactly this: Copilot is not a separate tool to open on the side, it lives inside the tools people already use every day. In the Microsoft 365 Copilot version, the AI is inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams, and can read and act on the organization's real documents and emails.

There are multiple products called "Copilot": Microsoft Copilot (the general assistant), Microsoft 365 Copilot (the one inside Office), and GitHub Copilot (for developers). This guide focuses on the first two, the ones relevant to office work and business.

Copilot works by receiving a request in natural language (called a prompt) and generating an answer. You can ask it to write an email, summarize a twenty-page report, build an Excel formula, draft a presentation, or search for information on the web. No technical commands needed: you write the way you would talk to an assistant.

In the free and Pro versions, Copilot works like a chat: you open it from copilot.microsoft.com, the app, Windows, or the Edge browser, type your request, and get the answer. In the Microsoft 365 Copilot version, on the other hand, the AI shows up directly inside the apps: in Word it helps write and revise, in Excel it analyzes data and builds charts, in PowerPoint it generates slides from a document, in Outlook it summarizes email threads and drafts replies, in Teams it summarizes meetings.

The advantage of the integrated version is context: Copilot 365 can access (within the limits of company permissions) the organization's files, emails, and calendars, so its answers are based on the company's real data and not just general knowledge. This is also why adopting it needs careful attention to data permissions and governance.

There are three main versions of Microsoft Copilot, with different features and prices. Here is the comparison, updated for 2026 (Microsoft list prices, indicative and subject to change).

Getting started with the free version is quick. A few steps are enough to try it out and see if the tool fits your needs.

• Sign in. Go to copilot.microsoft.com or open Copilot from Windows (the taskbar icon) or the Edge browser. For the free version, a personal Microsoft account is enough.
• Write a clear request. Instead of terse keywords, describe what you need: "write a formal email to postpone a meeting by two days" works better than "meeting email".
• Give it context. The more information you provide (tone, length, recipient, goal), the better the answer. You can paste in a text and ask it to summarize or rewrite it.
• Iterate. The first answer is a draft. Ask for changes in natural language: "shorter", "more casual tone", "add an example".
• Always verify. Copilot can get things wrong or make up data (so-called hallucinations). Check numbers, names, and sources before using an output in important contexts.

Copilot is useful for many everyday office tasks. Here are the most common uses that save time right away.

• Writing and revising text: emails, reports, descriptions, posts. Copilot generates drafts and fixes tone and grammar.
• Summarizing long documents: paste in or upload a PDF and get the key points in seconds.
• Analyzing data in Excel: in the 365 version, ask for trends, charts, and formulas without knowing the functions.
• Preparing presentations: in PowerPoint, turn a Word document into a draft slide deck.
• Managing email: in Outlook, summarize long threads and get draft replies.
• Catching up on meetings: in Teams, get a call summary and the action items, even if you joined late.

Copilot and ChatGPT use similar models (both from OpenAI's GPT family), so the quality of basic answers is comparable. The difference is in the integration and the context of use.

Copilot makes sense for anyone already working in the Microsoft ecosystem: the 365 version lives inside Office and accesses company data, a huge advantage for office work. ChatGPT stays more flexible as a standalone tool, with a broader ecosystem of features and integrations for general and creative uses. For more on using ChatGPT, see the complete ChatGPT guide.

For a company using Microsoft 365, Copilot is often the more natural choice because it removes the step of copying and pasting between different tools and keeps data inside the company environment already in use. The decision, though, should be made case by case and depends on the real processes involved.

Trying Copilot on your own is simple. Bringing it into a company across dozens or hundreds of people is another matter: it takes choosing the right licenses, configuring data permissions, training people, and measuring the return. Without these steps, licenses go unused and the investment does not pay off. We cover this in the guide to Microsoft Copilot for business, the intermediate level of this series.

For those who want to go beyond assisted use and build custom AI agents with Copilot Studio (Microsoft's platform for building tailored automations and agents), the topic moves into building AI agents for business. Copilot Studio is the bridge between everyday use of Copilot and the autonomous agents that run entire processes.

Yellow Tech guides Italian companies through this journey: from choosing licenses to training people, all the way to building custom agents. More than 20,000 people trained and 300+ AI agents in production.