Copilot Plugins Bring Customer-Specific AI

• Customers can extend Microsoft’s Copilot natural language-based assistants with plugins that can drive and query internal systems, such as those for sales, support, and HR.
• Plugins could make Copilots more helpful for internal organization users by assisting them with tasks such as expense reporting, item procurement, and facilities requests.
• Plugins can also be used with ChatGPT and Bing Chat, helping public users perform vendor-specific tasks, such as querying real estate listings and placing restaurant reservations.
• Most announced Copilots are in previews, some of which are private, but customers can plan plugins and do related development now to prepare for their availability.

All Copilots (and ChatGPT and Bing Chat) use the same architecture, which provides extensibility through plugins that give them more knowledge and capabilities through access to customer-provided APIs. For example, a plugin could enable a Copilot to look up data in an internal product sales database, access information in an employee handbook, or control manufacturing equipment. ChatGPT and Bing Chat plugins could give online firms new ways to accept orders for an online store or deliver data from an online service. (For an illustration, see “Copilot Architecture.”)