A few years ago, if someone said the word “copilot” to you, you’d probably picture the person sitting in the cockpit of an airplane, supporting your captain throughout a flight. Now, AI copilots and assistants are taking over the enterprise space, reshaping processes in every industry.
From business-focused solutions like Microsoft’s Copilot to tools like ChatGPT, Einstein in Salesforce, and Google Gemini, these intelligent assistants are everywhere, helping to draft content, answer questions, and streamline collaboration. Our own research even found the majority of our audience uses AI copilots to eliminate the need for manual note-taking in meetings.
As AI algorithms continue to improve, these assistants become more powerful, holistic members of the modern business team. But what exactly are AI copilots and assistants, how do they work, and what are the benefits (and challenges) of using these tools?
What are AI Copilots and Assistants?
AI copilots and assistants are solutions powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation, and analytics. They assist users (just like a traditional copilot) with endless tasks, from data analysis and decision-making to content and code creation.
The term “copilot” is really just another word for “AI assistant” – one that became popular after GitHub introduced its Copilot in 2021, and Microsoft followed on with its own Copilot system soon after. However, a solution doesn’t have to be called a “Copilot” to offer the same functionality. Tools like Google Gemini, ChatGPT, and Anthropic’s Claude fall into the same category.
- Curious about which AI copilot best suits your business use cases? Find out here.
AI copilots and assistants can also focus on different tasks in different industries. IT copilots might resolve tickets and diagnose issues. HR copilots might streamline onboarding or answer questions about PTO policies. Overall, AI copilots and assistants are defined by their ability to:
- Provide context-aware assistance in real-time for various tasks.
- Automate mundane and repetitive tasks (like summarizing calls).
- Analyze data from multiple sources.
- Enable seamless communication and collaboration.
- Unify disparate platforms, tools, and applications.
How Do AI Copilots and Assistants Work?
The exact functionality of different AI copilots and assistants vary. For instance, GitHub Copilot is designed for coding tasks, while Zoom AI Companion supports teams with everyday tasks and meetings. Each tool varies in its level of flexibility and abilities.
A basic AI copilot might do one thing (like creating captions for social media posts). A more advanced system could tackle a range of challenges, like ChatGPT, which can help with research, coding, content creation, and editing tasks.
Broadly, most copilots use basic API calls to leverage large language models (LLMs), natural language processing capabilities, and data from various apps and tools. Some systems even use multiple LLMs to tackle a range of challenges by leveraging their collective abilities.
Most AI copilots and assistants conduct these calls when they’re “prompted” to do so by a user, through a text prompt or a prompt using video and audio (with multimodal models). However, some systems can be automated to complete tasks in response to other triggers. For instance, Salesforce Einstein might automatically update a customer’s CRM record after each call.
The great thing about AI copilots and assistants is that they constantly learn. Thanks to machine learning algorithms, they can gather information about a user’s preferences and draw on new data to improve their abilities and accuracy over time.
- Curious about best practices for deploying copilots? Read our guide here!
AI Copilots vs AI Chatbots and Agentic AI
So, how do AI copilots and assistants differ from the tools we already know, like AI chatbots and evolving solutions like agentic AI? Copilots are an evolution of AI chatbots. Like copilots, chatbots use NLP and machine learning algorithms to interact with users through human-like conversations. However, they cannot dynamically adapt to user needs.
AI copilots are more advanced and versatile, capable of going beyond simple question-and-answer conversations to complete tasks like writing content. Agentic AI systems are a type of “evolution” for Copilots. They combine multiple copilots, assistants, and tools, drawing on their various abilities to automate more comprehensive tasks.
For instance, rather than just creating marketing content in response to a prompt, an agentic AI system could analyze a company’s metrics, define what kind of content they need, make it, publish it on the proper channels, and monitor results.
- Discover the best AI copilots success stories with our guide here.
AI Copilots and Assistants: Benefits for Businesses
Using generative AI tools, LLMs, data analysis, and more, AI copilots and assistants are rapidly becoming critical parts of the modern workforce. They’re improving productivity, minimizing workers' cognitive load, and improving decision-making tasks.
Probably the biggest benefits include:
1. Increased Productivity: Doing More with Less Effort
Business leaders and teams are always looking for ways to boost productivity and performance. AI copilots and assistants enhance productivity by automating tedious tasks, rapidly summarizing data, surfacing information, and more.
One of Microsoft’s early studies into Copilots even found that users of these tools boosted their productivity by 70 percent and completed tasks 73 percent faster. AI copilots can write, edit, summarize, and generate content instantly, streamline research tasks, and even assist employees as they work through complex projects with intelligent, context-aware suggestions.
2. Reducing Cognitive Load
Although employees need to be cautious about how much they rely on AI copilots and assistants for complex cognitive tasks (as proven by this Microsoft study), they’re excellent for reducing cognitive load. Most employees are constantly bombarded with information- emails, reports, meetings, dashboards, notifications.
AI assistants can act as intelligent filters, surfacing only the most relevant information for each task and cutting out the noise. This reduces the strain on team members and improves efficiency, productivity, and creativity.
3. Cost Savings
AI copilots and assistants aren’t just making work easier, they’re reducing costs too. Automating repetitive processes means fewer resources spent on manual labor. Plus, smarter decision-making reduces financial waste. Bain & Company even found that AI-driven automation usually cuts costs by around 17% for businesses.
Since AI assistants and copilots learn and improve constantly over time, they’re forever finding new ways to simplify processes and reduce costs. They can help organizations eliminate repetitive tasks, improve team members' accuracy, and break through bottlenecks.
4. Upgrading Decision Making
Today’s companies need to make decisions fast – but those decisions still need to be data-driven. AI copilots and assistants leverage AI infrastructure models and machine learning to understand and process huge amounts of data from various knowledge repositories and data sources.
They can connect employees to every business system instantly, helping them to make better, more informed decisions in real-time. Plus, they can identify patterns, trends and opportunities that human beings might otherwise miss. For instance, Salesforce Einstein can assess various data points to identify the best prospects and opportunities for teams to focus on.
5. Real-Time, Omnichannel, Multilingual Assistance
One of the biggest benefits of AI copilots and assistants is they’re always available. They’re there 24/7 to support teams during meetings, answer questions, and assess data – even when other employees are out of the office. Not only are they always around, but they’re flexible.
