AI Copilot in OneNote
Last month, Microsoft announced that it would bring generative AI models into its Microsoft 265 productivity suite. It means every app will have AI-powered Copilot.
Recently, the company announced that the Microsoft 365 Copilot will be integrated into OneNote. It utilizes the power of large language models (LLMs), data from Microsoft Graph, and information from other apps.
“We are thrilled to announce that the Microsoft 365 Copilot is coming to OneNote. This powerful tool combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your data from the Microsoft Graph—notes, calendars, emails, chats, documents, meetings, and more—and the Microsoft 365 apps to turn your words into a powerful productivity tool. All of this is done within our existing commitments to data security and privacy in the enterprise.”
The integration is similar to how Copilot is integrated into Word. In that case, the AI assistant can format, rewrite, or summarize the text in OneNote according to prompts in the sidebar interface.
You can also ask the assistant to create a plan for a certain topic and talk points for your meetings.
However, Microsoft has not shown how the integration is done in OneNote. But in the Word version, it is easy to highlight paragraphs and the AI will just appear when you move your mouse over a section of the paragraph to offer a rewritten text.
When Will It Be Available?
The AI Assistant will be coming to OneNote. However, the exact date is not yet known. But there is a small number of enterprise customers of Microsoft 365 who are testing a preview version of it in apps.
Building an AI-powered assistant is a huge job. But it is one job that Microsoft wants to do it quickly. When ChatGPT was released last year, tech companies started to race to be the first to beat it.
Microsoft says that the project required its employees to work for long hours and work weekends for several months. There was excitement within the group. The company has a lot of experience when it comes to AI. However, generative AI is said to be more capable.
Copilot is a new type of UX. It calls on different resources. It represents a new frontier of UX design. It still relies on GPT-4 large language model but it can also access business data from Microsoft Graph. In that case, it can generate stuff like email content.
The challenge was to determine how and when to integrate it in the context of the work that people do in Word, Powerpoint, and other go-to apps.
How Can You Use Copilot in OneNote?
Copilot can be used to generate summaries of your notes automatically. Thus, it makes it easier to review the key points of your notes quickly.
It can also suggest relevant content, like images and links. It can also help write notes faster by predicting what you are going to write next and providing auto-completion suggestions. It can also make your notes more readable by providing suggestions for improving sentence structure and grammar.
Most of all, it can help you find the information that you need in your notes more easily.
It’s still in the early phase. Thus, there are still a lot of missing functionalities. Microsoft will roll it out more broadly. But it has not committed to any dates yet.
