What is Copilot in PowerPoint?

While PowerPoint isn’t as popular as Word, Excel or Outlook, it’s still a key app for Microsoft Office users who create and deliver sales presentations. That’s why it will receive the full Microsoft 365 Copilot treatment.

As with so much of the Microsoft Office suite, regular users of PowerPoint take advantage of about 10% of the actual product. Copilot in PowerPoint will give everyone the ability to take advantage of the other 90%.

The promise? That it can turn your ideas into “stunning presentations”, with its special power being to turn your existing docs into attractive slides.

This article goes into more detail on how Copilot in PowerPoint works, its price and its availability. You can jump to each section using the links below:

• Is Copilot in PowerPoint available yet?
• What can Copilot in PowerPoint do?
• Can Copilot in PowerPoint create custom images?
• How much will Copilot in PowerPoint cost?

Is Copilot in PowerPoint available yet?

We expect Copilot in PowerPoint to arrive at the start of 2024, along with the rest of the Microsoft 365 Copilot suite. But we must add two caveats here.

First, Copilot is some distance from release as we write. So far, only the 600 enterprises who have signed up to the Copilot Early Access program have access.

Second, Microsoft remains coy in terms of its rollout plans. We expect Copilot to be released to its enterprise companies first — January 2024 is our best guess — with the business and consumer versions to follow soon after.

What can Copilot in PowerPoint do?

If you watch the video above then you’ll get an idea of its key selling point: rather than building a presentation from scratch, or using a template, you can tell Copilot in PowerPoint to create it for you.

For example, it can take a Word document — in the example, a business proposal — and instantly turn it into a professional-looking presentation. Naturally, it won’t get everything right, so you can either manually edit it or use prompts in Copilot to make slides more visual, add new slides, bring some extra zing via animations and generate speaker notes.

Or let’s say you have an existing presentation that you wish to improve. Copilot can turn bullet points into entire paragraphs — or paragraphs into simple bullet points. Or it can create improve the text in various ways, such as making it more concise.

It’s also clever enough to create original titles for slides within the presentation.

Can Copilot in PowerPoint create custom images?

Microsoft will integrate OpenAI’s image generator, DALL-E, to allow users to create their unique custom images. This should allow the presentations and stories to then come to life.

For example, you can tell Copilot in PowerPoint: “Create a black and white image of a computer from 1992 accessing Microsoft Loop and Microsoft 365 Copilot with a clown sat in a chair next to the computer.” And the image will quickly appear directly within PowerPoint.

It isn’t yet clear how many WALL-E credits you will receive as part of your subscription to Microsoft 365 Copilot, but they aren’t expensive. Today, you can buy 115 WALL-E credits (each of which buys a single creative request, be that a new image or an edit of a generated image) for $15.

How much will Copilot in PowerPoint cost?

So far, all we know is that Microsoft 365 Copilot as a whole will cost $30 per user per month for existing subscribers to its E3, E5 and Business products. We doubt that you will be able to buy a standalone subscription to Copilot in PowerPoint.

With additional reporting by Tim Danton

Additional Microsoft Copilot 365 coverage

• What is Microsoft Copilot in Excel?
• What is Microsoft Copilot in Word?
• What is Copilot in Outlook?
• Microsoft 365 Copilot price: how much will AI for Office apps cost?
• AI hype: Why Microsoft Copilot is going to be the new Clippy