Here is how many Copilots Microsoft actually has

What started as Bing Chat in 2023 later turned into Copilot and a tidal wave of service renaming as Microsoft tried to push its AI efforts into every corner of its product portfolio. As a result, Microsoft has over a dozen Copilots, some of which try to cannibalize well-established service names, leading to confusion and frustration among users. At one point, reports spread about Microsoft renaming Office apps to Microsoft 365 Copilot, forcing the company to issue a statement.

Figuring out all of Microsoft's Copilots and what they do might be quite a challenge. A user on X decided to try to create a list of Copilots that Microsoft offers these days, and the result is quite impressive or depressing, depending on how you look at it.

Core Copilots or Copilot for consumers:

• Microsoft Copilot: The first thing that comes to mind for most users when they hear the word Copilot. Like ChatGPT, it is the base AI assistant for chatting, image generation, summarization, etc. Available on the web, as a Windows/Mac/mobile app, inside Bing and Edge, and more. There is also Copilot Pro, a premium version with multiple extras.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot: AI assistant in Microsoft 365/Office productivity apps (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, OneNote). Each Microsoft 365 app also has its own Copilot for specific tasks like summaries, scheduling, translation, and slide generation.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat: A chat-based Copilot interface for business productivity tasks.
• Copilot in Windows: An AI-based assistant that can automate various actions across the operating system, adjust settings, explain things, etc. Parts of Copilot in Windows require additional hardware like Neural Processing Units.
• Copilot+ PCs: PCs with specialized hardware that enable local AI and additional experiences, primarily by utilizing dedicated Neural Processing Units.
• GitHub Copilot: A developer-focused assistant that helps code writers by suggesting code or explaining stuff.
• Microsoft Security Copilot: Specialized AI for security teams that offers insights, threat detection, incident response, and automation integrated with Defender, Sentinel, Intune, Entra and related security products.
• Copilot Studio: A platform for building and customizing AI agents that can be published to Microsoft 365, Teams, and other environments.

Business-focused Copilots:

• Copilot for Dynamics 365: Embedded AI assistants across Dynamics modules (Sales, Customer Service, Finance, Supply Chain, Marketing, etc.) for automated insights, summaries, and guidance.
• Copilot in Power Platform:
  • Copilot in Power Automate: Automates flows from natural-language prompts.
  • Copilot in Power Apps: Assists low-code app creation.
• Copilot in Microsoft Fabric (Analytics & Data): AI support for data tasks like semantic querying, analysis, and building insights within Microsoft’s data-integration platform.
• Copilot in Azure: Assistants within Azure services to help with cloud resource configuration, automation, troubleshooting, and optimization

Role-specific Copilots

• Copilot for Finance: Finance-oriented AI for reporting, forecasting, and financial insights.
• Copilot for Sales: Sales-focused assistant embedded in CRM workflows (Dynamics 365).
• Copilot for Service: Service-oriented AI across service management platforms.

What is funny about this list of 16 different Copilots is that it is most likely far from complete, and there may be other Copilots for different tasks. Microsoft is done with hundreds of different Windows SKUs (remember Windows Vista Starter, Home Basic, and Home Premium?), but its tradition of making confusing and cluttered product portfolios is still here. Good old Microsoft.