Expanding Microsoft Copilot Access in Education
Over the last year, we have seen incredible innovation, resiliency, and adaptability around the intersection of AI technology and education. Through deep collaboration with education institutions and thoughtful consideration we can leverage AI to improve efficiency, bring time and joy back to teaching, and help students prepare for an AI driven future. It is increasingly important that we create opportunities to partner and learn with our education community. We’re energized by early research demonstrating the ability for generative AI to positively impact learning.
Recently, we announced several expansions for education audiences. Microsoft Copilot with commercial data protection is available to all faculty and higher education students ages 18 and above. And, Copilot for Microsoft 365 eligibility will now include education faculty and staff.
Our efforts are guided by our Responsible AI principles and standard and build on decades of research on grounding and privacy-preserving machine learning. Additionally, our Customer Copyright Commitment means education customers can be confident using our services and the output they generate without worrying about copyright claims. We look forward to exploring the potential for these offers in education, iterating and improving, and supporting all education organizations in the era of AI.
Extending Microsoft Copilot with commercial data protection to all higher education faculty and students ages 18+
Since launching Microsoft Copilot with commercial data protection (formerly Bing Chat Enterprise) to faculty and staff in August, we’ve heard about powerful uses around the world. Wichita Public Schools is an inspiring example where their educators have already leveraged it to personalize learning, resulting in saving time and energy to reinvest back into their students.
We’re happy to share the expansion eligibility for commercial data protection to all faculty users and to higher education students ages 18 and above. Copilot provides AI chat for the web with access to models like GPT-4 and DALL-E 3 at no additional cost. This means user and organizational data are protected, chat prompts and responses in Copilot are not saved, Microsoft has no eyes-on access to them, and they aren’t used to train the underlying large language models.
“Artificial intelligence has the power to revolutionize higher education. Our partnership with Microsoft has allowed us to improve learning for students and support innovative research across Florida State University through an automated, safe, and reliable platform. I am excited to see what our next generation of leaders can achieve with tools such as Copilot.”
Jonathan Fozard, Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Florida State University
Over the last 10 months, Copilot has continued to bring advanced capabilities and unlock new scenarios. Features rolling out soon include GPT-4 Turbo to tackle longer tasks, the new DALL-E 3 model with higher quality images, Multi-Modal with Search Grounding for better image understanding, and Code Interpreter for more accurate calculations and analysis. Students can leverage these innovations and more from Copilot to:
- Summarize information easily
- Brainstorm and get started on assignments
- Get step by step explanations for math solutions
- Find answers quickly, with links to sources
- Improve their writing skills
- Learn or study in the way that works best for them
- Receive initial feedback on their work
- Write code using natural-language requests
- Make their projects more visually appealing
- Free up time for what matters and interests them most
Meet your AI assistant for education: Microsoft Copilot
Administrators can manage and control user access by validating their school type, leveraging the Copilot service plan, updating age group classifications, and even creating their own terms of use. We encourage you to learn more about how to prepare your student population for AI through the recommendations in the Microsoft Tech Community blog.
Copilot for Microsoft 365 to faculty and staff
Copilot’s earliest users have already seen productivity and creativity gains in organizations across industries. We are excited to bring this opportunity to education by extending the availability of the enterprise offer for Copilot for Microsoft 365 at $30 per user per month for faculty and staff. Copilot for Microsoft 365 combines the power of large language models (LLMs) with your organization’s data—all in the flow of work—to turn your words into one of the most powerful productivity tools on the planet. It brings a whole new way to work for everyone from faculty and researchers to IT pros and administrators
“Microsoft Copilot offers a transformative solution for higher education, significantly optimizing time for faculty. This multifaceted tool is already expediting Hoosiers’ workflows but also serves as an invaluable resource for cultivating specialized skill sets in AI and technology among our IU community.”
Outside of the classroom, we see opportunities to shift how staff spend their time to their most impactful work across research, communications, marketing, data analysis, fundraising, and management. We’ve also heard from Academic Medical Centers who are experiencing improved efficiency and discovering new use cases to harness the potential of generative AI.
“AI is a powerful differentiator, and our unique partnership with Microsoft accelerates our mutual focus on redefining conventional approaches for how we work and deliver care. Solutions like Copilot for Microsoft 365 bring us one step closer to realizing our vision for the future through the responsible, secure, and ethical use of AI.”
Copilot for Microsoft 365 is your AI assistant at work, and it goes far beyond simple questions and answers. It combs across your entire universe of data—all your emails, meetings, chats, documents, and more, plus the web—to solve your most complex work problems. And it’s integrated into the Microsoft 365 Apps millions of people use every day—Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Teams, and more. Plus, it includes enterprise-grade security, privacy, compliance, and responsible AI to ensure all data processing happens in your tenant. Microsoft 365 A3 and A5 faculty are eligible and you can learn more from in Microsoft Copilot for Microsoft 365 documentation.
Creating opportunities to build AI literacy
As we bring the latest AI technology into education, we will also continue developing training material and opportunities for learners to build AI literacy. For higher education students and educators, we just created a new Microsoft Learn module to help them learn about and practice with the capabilities of Microsoft Copilot.
If you’re wondering where to get started with your AI journey, check out the Forrester Total Economic Impact Study and how we can help improve your security posture and enable cost savings.
This post Expanding Microsoft Copilot access in education first appeared on the Microsoft Education Blog.”
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