What is Copilot exactly?

A coworker of mine told me that he uses Microsoft Copilot frequently. In fact, he said "I don't know how I did my work without it." That came as a surprise to me. I can't stand Copilot. This is a very productive employee, one of those 10x engineers you can throw any problem at and he'll find a solution. Obviously, if he found a use for Copilot, then I was probably holding it wrong.

So I decided to give it a shot. I put all my prejudice aside and embraced the tool fully. AI is the future, and it shouldn't be hard to find a way to integrate it into my everyday workflow. I decided to give it a week, meaning I wouldn't complain even when I didn't get the result I wanted. Instead, for every frustration, I would use Copilot to help me turn that frown into a smile.

The result? I created a workflow. I automated a lot of the things I find super annoying: scrum ceremonies, BRD reviews, email writing. All the things I feel like I must do only for someone else to tick a box in their own workflow. After the first week, I decided to extend my trial for a full sprint. By embracing this tool, I felt like I had eliminated my manager's job. Instead of having him check boxes on his end, I could just present my reports at the end of the week. I created a template prompt where I could dump information throughout the day, and at the end of the day it would generate a report in whatever format I wanted.

I was so proud of my template that I shared it with my 10x coworker. He didn't respond with the enthusiasm I was expecting. He didn't understand what I was trying to do. In fact, he told me he had never used Copilot before. That was in direct contradiction of what he'd told me earlier. He was the only reason I gave this tool a shot, and here he was pretending we'd never had that conversation. Well, he clarified:

"I meant Copilot on VS Code."

Now, can you guess which Copilot I was using? Whatever Copilot is offered through Teams. And I say "whatever" because I genuinely don't know which one that is. Is it the same as accessing Copilot on the web? I wouldn't know. Our corporate firewall blocks that one. Teams seems to be the only approved method.

Anyway, what is Copilot exactly? Is it just a white-labeled ChatGPT? When I asked it directly, it said:

"It's Microsoft's AI companion, powered by advanced models (including OpenAI's), but shaped by Microsoft's ecosystem, design philosophy, and capabilities.
If ChatGPT is a powerful engine, Copilot is the full car built around it — with Microsoft's dashboard, safety systems, and features."

But where did the name come from? I'm sure I first heard it in the context of GitHub. The first AI code assistant shipped with VS Code. Even though they're both Microsoft products, they're two distinct products. If you use GitHub Copilot, your data isn't siphoned back to your Microsoft account (for now).

What I was using in Teams is Copilot for Microsoft 365, which is apparently different from Microsoft Copilot. The 365 version lives inside Microsoft 365 apps (that's Microsoft Office's new name, for those not keeping up). The key difference is that the 365 version can work with your emails, documents, OneDrive, and so on.

But if you have a Windows device, you also have Windows Copilot, distinct from the one in Microsoft 365. This one is your AI assistant inside the OS, meant to help you launch apps, summarize what's on your screen, and handle everyday tasks. In my experience, I couldn't get it to do any of those things. Apparently, I don't have a Copilot+ PC.

Reading through Microsoft's docs, I also found something called Copilot Chat. It's not quite a distinct product, but I'm not sure how else to classify it. Microsoft describes it as a general-purpose reasoning tool for writing, brainstorming, and coding. You can find it in M365 apps, and also within GitHub Copilot. That's the part that explains code, suggests fixes, and helps with debugging.

I asked Copilot Chat via GitHub Copilot to explain the difference between all the offerings. It summarized it neatly:

"Same family, different jobs."

I'm only scratching the surface of what Copilot is supposed to be, and I'm already tired. I felt inspired by a developer to explore it, only to find that he was touching just a small slice of this ecosystem. I still think it's worth encouraging teammates to embrace a tool that everyone else is losing sleep over. I should have stopped there, but I wanted to learn more about his workflow. I'm a developer after all, and whatever he's doing would be worth implementing with my team.

So I asked him. "What is your developer workflow using Copilot?" I was not prepared for the answer he gave me:

"Actually, I made a mistake. I meant Cursor."

And there it was. He wasn't talking about Copilot at all. Not the Teams one, not the GitHub one, not any of them. He had used "Copilot" the way most people use "Kleenex". To him, any AI code assistant was just a copilot. I had spent a whole sprint, struggling through this tool, inspired by someone who couldn't have cared less about Microsoft's ecosystem. There's a lesson there, I'm sure. I just didn't learn anything.

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