Last month, Microsoft launched Copilot Pro, a subscription service that costs $20 per month and provides some artificial intelligence features within Office applications, as well as priority access to the latest OpenAI models and improved image generation capabilities. Let's take a closer look at all the features currently available with Copilot Pro. Designer Image Creation One of the main attractions of subscribing to Copilot Pro is the enhanced Designer, Microsoft's image creation tool. Designer uses OpenAI's DALL-E 3 model to generate content, and the paid Copilot Pro version can create more detailed widescreen images compared to the free version. When experimenting with Designer for image creation, it performs particularly impressively when you input as many details as possible. Asking Designer to provide an image of "a dachshund sitting by the window staring at a piece of bacon" can generate some good examples, but with some additional prompts, you can get Designer to do even more. Adding more descriptive language to generate a "hyper-realistic painting with natural light, mid-range, and shallow depth of field" will greatly enhance the image effect. As you can see in the two examples below, Designer accurately captures natural lighting and there is some depth of field around the bacon. Unfortunately, there are multiple pieces of bacon here instead of just one, and they are all huge bacon slices. Like most things involving artificial intelligence, Designer is not perfect. In fact, out of the four generated images, usually only one or two are usable. DALL-E 3 also struggles with handling text, especially when you ask Designer to add labels or signs with text. However, it does a good job with the "1910 UPS deliveryman illustration". Copilot Pro can generate 100 images per day, much faster than the free version. Copilot in Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook Although Copilot Pro is not solely for image generation, this subscription service unlocks artificial intelligence features within Office applications. In Word, you can use Copilot to generate text, which is particularly helpful for starting document outlines or refining paragraphs. If you have numerical data, you can also have Copilot visualize that data as graphs or tables, which is useful for making text-heavy documents easier to read. When you highlight text, a small Copilot logo appears, prompting you to select it for rewriting or visualization. If you select an entire paragraph, Copilot will attempt to rewrite it with different options that you can cycle through and choose from. Like image generation, paragraph rewriting can be a bit hit-or-miss, bringing different meanings to sentences by replacing words. Overall, I found that it didn't improve my writing skills. However, it may be more useful for people who don't write frequently. For some people, Copilot in Outlook is very useful. You can use it daily to check email summaries, which conveniently appear at the top of emails. When you have a long email thread, having a summary that quickly provides all the key information is very helpful. You can also use Copilot in Outlook to generate emails or compose replies. Similar to Word, there is a rewriting tool that allows you to draft an email and then analyze it to generate suggestions for improving the tone or clarity of the email. If you're not accustomed to creating presentations, Copilot is equally useful in PowerPoint. You can request it to generate slides in a specific style, and you will receive a complete set of slides within seconds. Designer is part of this feature, so you can delve into each individual slide and modify the images or text. Currently, the Excel portion of Copilot seems to be the most limited. You need to arrange the data neatly in a table, otherwise, Copilot will try to convert it. Once your data is Copilot-friendly, you can create visualizations, use data insights to create pivot tables, and even get formula suggestions. Copilot for Excel is still in preview, so we may see more features here over time. OneNote is another example of Copilot in Office applications. Similar to Word, you can draft notes or plans here and easily rewrite text. Copilot also provides summaries of your notes, which can be particularly interesting if you're trying to summarize shorthand notes or incomplete notes that only you can understand. Copilot GPTs and the Future Microsoft has also introduced a series of GPTs for fitness, travel, and cooking. These are essentially personal assistants within Copilot that can help you find recipes, plan vacations, or create personalized workout plans. Copilot Pro subscribers will soon be able to build their own custom GPTs around specific themes. Overall, Copilot Pro is a promising start to Microsoft's consumer AI efforts, with solid improvements in image generation. It may be worth the $20 per month for some individuals.