Last month, we took a deep dive into Gemini for Google Workspace, and while it had a couple of interesting features, it left us feeling pretty underwhelmed.

Copilot recently rolled out similar tools to their Microsoft Office customers, so we decided to test them out and see if they succeeded where Gemini fell short.

What is Microsoft Copilot?

Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered assistant integrated into Microsoft Office 365 applications – like Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint – and available on the web as a dedicated chatbot. Here’s the quick rundown on Copilot’s capabilities:

• Editing and refining your writing in Outlook and Word.
• Converting docs into presentation slides in PowerPoint.
• Summarizing or asking questions about long documents, email threads, and information in Excel sheets.
• Analyzing data in Excel and generating new insights, graphs, and tables.
• Chatting with Copilot on the web through a conversational interface that integrates with Bing.

For all of these interactions, Copilot uses the most powerful models from OpenAI like GPT-4. Copilot is accessible in most Office 365 applications through a dedicated sidebar.

Pricing and features breakdown

Microsoft offers Copilot in 3 versions: Microsoft Copilot (free version), Microsoft Copilot Pro (for consumers), and Copilot for Microsoft 365 (for businesses and enterprises). The marketing is hard to understand, so we’ve broken down the pricing and features for each plan:

A few important takeaways here:

1. Microsoft Copilot only gives you access to that chatbot interface on the web — not access to Copilot in Word, Excel, or Powerpoint. To get that, you’ll need to upgrade to Microsoft Copilot Pro.
   
2. To use the Copilot Pro or Copilot for Microsoft 365 features in the various Office apps, you’ll have to already be subscribed to the Microsoft Suite (it doesn’t come with Copilot).
   
3. If you're on a business or enterprise plan for Office, the Copilot for Microsoft 365 plan is your only option – but it is seat-based, meaning you can purchase licenses for individual users rather than being required to buy it for your entire organization.

What Copilot can do for you

Chatting with Microsoft Copilot on the web is a similar experience to Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini. It can help you:

• Catch up with easy-to-digest summaries of projects, people, and meetings.
• Create content by providing instructions or reference files, generate drafts and outlines, and brainstorm ideas.
• Ask Copilot questions about your files, meetings, chats, emails, the web, and shared documents in OneDrive without having to search them yourself.
• Use Copilot to summarize, brainstorm, or draft content on your phone, through their iOS and Android apps.

Create is a key capability of Copilot available across Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. Copilot works alongside you to help draft and create content.

• In Word and PowerPoint, Copilot can generate first drafts, offer new ideas, and build upon existing content.
• Excel users can leverage Copilot for intelligent formula suggestions, simplifying complex calculations and spreadsheet setup.
• Outlook users can save time by drafting emails, facilitating quick outreach and responses.

Standout feature: The ability to take a Word document and simply upload it into PowerPoint to create a whole presentation from scratch. Unfortunately, this is only available on the business and enterprise versions of Copilot.

Edit is another core feature of Copilot that helps you refine and restructure your content across the apps.

• In Word, Copilot can help rewrite your copy and format text into tables.
• In PowerPoint, Copilot can help reorganize your slides into a more effective narrative.
• In Outlook the edit capabilities overlap with the create feature, with Copilot working as your drafting partner.

Understand or catch-up allows Copilot to analyze and summarize your content, getting you to key points quickly.

• In Word and PowerPoint, Copilot can provide a summary of your longer documents and presentations. This is a big win when you're short on time and need a TL;DR.
• In Excel, Copilot goes deeper into your data, helping you explore trends and better understand the information in your spreadsheets.
• In Outlook, Copilot can transform long email threads into concise summaries, making it easier to follow the conversation.

…But they have some work to do on how they market it. Let’s be real, “catch-up” and “understand” are not intuitive feature names for summarizing and analyzing content, even if they do a great job.

That being said, where Gemini falls short in providing a seamless and integrated experience across products, Microsoft Copilot excels (pun intended). Here’s our take:

👍 Create is becoming table stakes at this point and Microsoft is smart to plant that experience in Word, Outlook, and other Office 365 apps.

👍 Editing a PowerPoint with Copilot’s just-add-branding approach is a game changer. The ability to go from nothing to something with fully fleshed out speaker notes makes polishing presentations less mundane.

👎 Chatting with Copilot on the web does not stand out when compared to Claude, ChatGPT, and even Gemini.

👍 Catch-up, ask, and understand will become key for getting up to speed on long email threads, complex documents, and data heavy spreadsheets. Arguably the most hard to understand features of the set have the most disruptive capabilities.

➕ Bonus points for an integrated experience that connects across the Microsoft Suite. Being able to transition from one task to another (e.g. converting a Word document into a PowerPoint presentation with speaker notes) is something Gemini fails to deliver on that sets Copilot apart.

Our recommendation: In the end, we’re only sticking with Gemini because we work in the Google ecosystem. If you’re a Microsoft-based company, Copilot is a better buy. And given Microsoft's ongoing investments and partnership with OpenAI, Copilot is likely to get even better.

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Want to go even deeper? Check out our new course on Applying Microsoft Copilot and learn more about how to put these features to work.