What’s Microsoft Copilot and how do I use it? A Q&A with Danny Johnston

On November 29, McMaster made Microsoft Copilot available to faculty and staff. The service will not be available to students at this time due to restrictions with the campus license.

To learn more about the tool, we chatted with our resident IT expert Danny Johnston.

What is Copilot?

Microsoft Co-Pilot (formerly known as Bing Chat Enterprise) can be summed up as a Microsoft’s own ChatGPT. Enter a prompt and it will provide a response by scanning the web for answers.

How do I use it?

You can access it by going to Bing.com/chat or using the Bing search engine in Microsoft Edge. Just login to Bing with your McMaster email address and your password, then you’re good to go!

What could I use it for?

Imagine there is a spam email circulating in the faculty and I want to write a note to you all to be on the lookout for it. I could enter the prompt “write me an email about being on the lookout for a new spam email and end it with a Jean-Luc Picard quote about perseverance” and it would report back with a draft. Another thing you can do is ask it to create things like social media posts or images. There are obviously limitations but it could be a useful resource for generating ideas to start a project, an email, or a report.

Are there any privacy concerns?

This is always the #1 question (and it should be!) and one that I had when it was mentioned to me that this was going to launch. The reassuring thing with this institutionally licensed version of Copilot is that it will not collect any of the information you enter into it, does not have access to data in your McMaster account, will not used to train the AI system and no one can access what you enter, not McMaster or even Microsoft.