Can Copilot Help With Novel Writing?

Is it another AI tool to help us improve our craft?

This past week, Microsoft made more waves in the generative AI world when they announced Copilot for Microsoft 365.

Copilot is an AI baked into the Microsoft/Office 365 suite of products and it allows you to create content based on existing content. The idea is to reduce the tedius aspects of office work by letting you quickly compose emails, word documents and even presentations automatically. Copilot does this by leveraging existing emails, documents, Teams chats etc. This can be something as simple as summarizing an email conversation, or creating a PowerPoint presentation based on a project document in Word. Or, it could be summarizing the current project status by using emails and notes. The below video gives you a good idea of what that would look like.

This article at The Verge goes into a bit more detail from a user perspective.

Although Copilot is clearly aimed at the office space, I couldn't help but wonder if this product can in some way be leveraged for novel writing.

Imagine this: you use OneNote or Word to create an outline of your story. You keep notes about the story characters in one document and worldbuilding details in another. Maybe you even have email conversations with others regarding research for your project. Perhaps you created a story outline using ChatGPT.

Then, you use Copilot in Word to create a sample outline, or write blurbs about the story, maybe even whole chapters.

Is this a possible scenario? It's too early to tell, I think, at this point. Based on what’s available publicly, I have my doubts. ChatGPT does a descent job assisting with novel-related tasks and from the brief moments I’ve had with Google’s Bard, it seems like Bard can to some extent as well. With no firm release date for Copilot announced and likely limited to Microsoft 365 subscriptions, it's possible Copilot may not even be accessible to many writers.

For now, we'll have to wait and see how Copilot works out in its limited deployment and whether any of its technical wizardry can be applicable for a novel writer. If you’re interested, The Verge article is an interesting one about this topic and you can also dive into the announcement from Microsoft.

Have you looked into Copilot yourself? What are your thoughts?