What can Copilot do?
Microsoft Copilot can answer questions with live web results, draft and rewrite text, generate images, analyze uploaded PDFs and documents, and use voice. With a paid Microsoft 365 plan it works inside your apps: summarizing Outlook emails and Teams meetings, building Excel formulas, writing Word documents, and creating PowerPoint slides.
Why — the first-principles explanation
Everything Copilot does traces back to one capability: a large language model that turns instructions into text (or images). From that single engine, Microsoft builds many features by pointing it at different inputs and outputs. Understanding this makes the long feature list feel simple, they are all variations of "read some context, produce a useful result."
The features fall into two families. Standalone abilities work in the free chatbot and need no special data: answering questions (grounded in web search), writing and editing text, translating, brainstorming, generating images, and analyzing files you upload. These compete with other general AI assistants.
Integrated abilities are the paid, work-version features that connect to your Microsoft 365 data. Here Copilot can summarize the 40-email thread in your inbox, catch you up on a Teams meeting you missed, write an Excel formula against your actual spreadsheet, draft a Word document from your notes, or build a PowerPoint deck from a document. These are valuable precisely because they use context only you have access to.
The boundary between the two is data access plus license. The free version is a smart generalist; the paid version becomes your personal office assistant because it can see, with your permission, the files and messages you already work with. Both share the same underlying AI brain.
An example that makes it click
Think of Copilot as a Swiss Army knife with two sides. One side has tools anyone can use out of the box: a pen (writes emails), a magnifying glass (answers questions from the web), a paintbrush (makes images), and a reader that scans any document you hand it.
The other side only unfolds when you have the paid membership and plug it into your office. Then it grows tools that reach into your own drawers: a highlighter that summarizes your 40-message email thread, a stenographer that recaps the meeting you missed, and a calculator that builds the exact Excel formula for your spreadsheet. Same knife, but the second side needs your keys to open.
Key facts
- Copilot can answer questions using live web search and provide source citations.
- It can draft, rewrite, summarize, and translate text, and generate images from descriptions.
- It can analyze uploaded files such as PDFs and Word documents and answer questions about them.
- With a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot plan, it summarizes Outlook emails and Teams meetings.
- In Office apps it builds Excel formulas, writes Word documents, and creates PowerPoint slides.
- Copilot supports voice input and is available on web, Windows, iOS, and Android.
Microsoft's assistant across Windows, Edge, and Microsoft 365.
Affiliate link — we may earn a commission at no cost to you.▶ The 60-second explainer (script)
What can Microsoft Copilot actually do? A lot, and it splits into two groups. First, the free abilities anyone can use: it answers questions using live web search with citations, drafts and rewrites emails or essays, translates languages, brainstorms ideas, generates images from a description, and analyzes files you upload, like asking questions about a PDF or Word document. It even works by voice. Then there's the paid, work version, which plugs into your Microsoft 365 apps and unlocks the really powerful stuff. It can summarize a giant email thread in Outlook, recap a Teams meeting you missed, write an Excel formula for your actual spreadsheet, turn your notes into a Word document, or build a PowerPoint deck from a report. The difference is data access: the free version is a smart generalist, while the paid version becomes your personal office assistant that can see, with your permission, the files you already work with. One AI brain, dozens of everyday jobs.
What authoritative sources say
People also ask
Can Copilot generate images?
Yes. Copilot creates images from text descriptions, with daily limits on the free tier and higher limits on paid plans.
Can Copilot read and summarize my documents?
Yes. You can upload a PDF or Word file and ask Copilot to summarize it or answer questions about its content.
Does Copilot work inside Excel and PowerPoint?
With a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot plan, yes. It can build formulas and charts in Excel and generate slides in PowerPoint.
Can Copilot access the internet for current info?
Yes. Copilot uses live web search to answer questions about recent events and provides links to its sources.