What is an AI copilot and what can it realistically do for you?

Today’s question: What is an AI copilot, and how can you use it to work faster and smarter?

You’ll be hearing a lot about AI copilots in the coming months. You don’t need to get into all the tech minutiae, but it helps to understand what they are, what they can (and can’t) do, and how they work within your everyday business apps.?

Here’s a key point – not all AI copilots are created equal. The most effective are grounded in your business data vs. generic data. That means it can answer questions, summarize content, create new content, interpret complex conversations, and do things on your behalf, all within the context of what’s relevant to you, your business, and your customers.

We break it all down here.?

What can you use an AI copilot for?

Imagine writing an email to a sales prospect in 20 seconds instead of 20 minutes, completing hours of research in minutes, or automatically receiving a full summary of a customer’s service history. It’s possible with a conversational AI assistant, or copilot, where you simply tell a copilot in plain language, what to do for you, right in the flow of your work.?

Workers in sales, service, marketing, retail, are applying this technology right now to make their workdays easier and more efficient.

Want to get in on the action? Here are five of the most common AI copilot uses.?

What our community is saying?

AI assistants are a really a big shift from the idea of people thinking we’re going to automate them out of a job to showing them that we’re helping them close more deals and serve customers better.

—? Andrew Russo , enterprise architect at BACA Systems

What we’re reading?

• How can an AI copilot help contact center supervisors be better managers? Forbes identifies six ways, including coaching, performance evaluation, and development planning.
• CIO Online does a deep(ish) dive on the “firehose of rapidly releasing platform copilot enhancements.” It aims to help sort out what works and what can scale.
• NPR reports on a slew of startups working on AI agents, including a walkie-talkie-type gadget from rabbit inc. , to do things for consumers like plan a vacation and order an Uber.?
• In what VentureBeat says is a seismic shift in how software engineering teams will operate, GitHub introduced GitHub Copilot Enterprise, an AI assistant that generates code suggestions, answers questions, and summarizes changes based on your org’s code base and standards.?

This newsletter was curated by Lisa DiCarlo Lee , Contributing Editor at Salesforce .

What’s the biggest question you have about AI? Let us know with a comment below. We read every single one and may just choose yours as the subject for a future newsletter.?