Frequently asked questions: AI, Microsoft Copilot, and Microsoft Designer

Microsoft Copilot is an AI-powered digital assistant designed to help users with a range of tasks and activities on their devices. It can create drafts of content, suggest different ways to word something you've written, suggest and insert images, create PowerPoint presentations from your Word documents and many other helpful things.

Learn more about Microsoft Copilot.

Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps like Word or PowerPoint is now available to home users who subscribe to Copilot Pro or business customers who subscribe to Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365. Learn more at Where can I get Microsoft Copilot?

Copilot generates content based on language patterns it has found throughout the internet. Sometimes its results will be very similar to existing internet content. Or, Copilot might generate the same or very similar content for multiple people who are prompting Copilot in the same way.

For example, everyone who instructs Copilot to create a "recipe for apple pie" is likely to wind up with identical or nearly identical content. 

Image Creator by Designer and the Designer app are governed by their respective service terms. Under these terms today, Microsoft does not claim ownership of either content input by customers or content output by the service. Except for our acceptable use policies, Microsoft’s terms do not restrict the commercialization of images created with these services, although customers will need to make their own determination regarding the IP rights they have in output content and its commercial usability, taking into account their usage scenario(s) and the laws of the relevant jurisdiction.

Designer’s Image Creator has been made available in Microsoft  Copilot to help users easily generate images for their slides and documents. Generated images are created with DALL·E 3, an AI model that can create images from text inputs. Given a prompt,  Copilot can generate a set of images matching that prompt. 

Creating an image works differently than searching for stock images. 

Designer’s Image Creator works best when you’re more descriptive, so get creative and add details like adjectives, locations, or even artistic styles such as ‘digital art’ and ‘photorealistic.’ 

Here's an example of a how to create a longer, more descriptive prompt: 

• Original prompt: "astronaut"

• Descriptive prompt: "A close-up photo of an astronaut in a glowing suit made of plasma, as if the galaxy is inside of it, putting on their helmet, but you can't see their face because of the visor, realistic, film stock, bright colors."

Designer’s Image Creator in Copilot was evaluated through extensive manual and automatic testing. More evaluation was performed over custom datasets for offensive and malicious prompts and responses. In addition, Designer’s Image Creator is continuously evaluated with user feedback. 

Generated images are available to Copilot Pro users only, and not yet available to Commercial Microsoft 365  Copilot users. 

Designer’s Image Creator has controls in place to prevent the generation of harmful images in accordance with our content policy. When our system detects that a potentially harmful image could be generated by a prompt, it automatically blocks the prompt and informs the user. Additionally, when our system detects a potentially harmful generated image, it automatically blocks this image from the set of images delivered to the user. 

Designer’s Image Creator has been reviewed by our Responsible AI (RAI) team. We follow Microsoft’s RAI principals and have implemented:  

• Responsible AI handling pipeline to mitigate the risks like harmful, inappropriate content.

• In-product user feedback with which users can report offensive content back to Microsoft.

We help make it clear that Image Creator's images are generated by AI. We have implemented content credentials, provenance based on the C2PA standard, to help users identify AI generated Images.  

We allow living artists, celebrities, and organizations to make requests to limit the creation of images associated with their names and brands via the AI-powered features option on our Report a Concern form. 

ChatGPT is a natural language processing technology from OpenAI that uses machine learning, deep learning, natural language understanding, and natural language generation to answer questions or respond to conversations. It is designed to mimic human conversation by understanding a user’s question or comment and responding in an engaging and conversational way.

ChatGPT uses advanced algorithms to try and understand what you're asking for, and then build a response by predicting what the next word should be as it builds its reply. It's trained on a set of public content from a specific point in time and doesn't search the live web to get answers. Because of this it may struggle to answer questions about recent events. 

Microsoft and OpenAI are working together to develop the underlying AI. Microsoft is developing and providing the supercomputing infrastructure that OpenAI services run on. 

Responsible AI is AI that is designed, developed, and deployed in a way that takes into account ethical, legal, and societal considerations. This includes considering the potential for unintended consequences, being transparent about how decisions are made, and respecting privacy. Responsible AI also requires building trust and ensuring accountability, as well as ensuring that individuals are not discriminated against due to their race, gender, or other protected characteristics.

For more information visit our Responsible AI site.

No, AI is not designed to replace people in the workplace. AI is designed to make certain tasks more efficient, but it will not be able to take over more complex tasks that require human judgment, decision-making, and creativity. AI can help businesses become more efficient and productive, but it won't replace the need for humans in the workplace.

AI can create drafts of content but it's still important to have a human in the loop to review, edit, and approve the content AI has created.

Copilot and Microsoft 365 are built on Microsoft's comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy.

For more information about privacy, see the following information:

• If you’re using Copilot for Microsoft 365 in your organization (with your work or school account), see Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365.

• If you're using Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps at home as part of Copilot Pro (with your personal Microsoft account), see Copilot Pro: Microsoft 365 apps and your privacy.

Yes, many Microsoft products have AI built in, including Microsoft 365, Microsoft Azure, Windows, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Cognitive Services.