Inteligencia Artificial y ChatGPT

How to use Copilot in Word, Excel and Teams (2026)

Post actualizado el día October 25, 2026 by DeiviSanzPlay

If you’ve searched for “what is Microsoft’s ChatGPT called,” the short answer is Copilot. But stopping there leaves you with only half the picture. Copilot isn’t just a ChatGPT clone with a different logo: it’s a layer of artificial intelligence embedded within Windows, Office, and the entire Microsoft 365 ecosystem. And in 2026, that difference makes a world of difference compared to using a browser tab to ask a chatbot questions.

Let me be clear: if you work with Word, Excel, Outlook, or Teams every day, Copilot is the AI tool that will change your workday the most. Not through magic, but because it’s where you work, not on a separate website.

Copilot isn’t ChatGPT: the key difference almost no one explains

Many people assume that Microsoft Copilot is simply ChatGPT with Microsoft skins. Big mistake. Copilot uses OpenAI language models (GPT-4 and later), yes, but what makes it different is the context. ChatGPT knows what you tell it. Copilot knows what you have in your OneDrive, in your email, in your calendar, and in your shared documents.

That integration with Microsoft Graph is the key. When you ask Copilot to summarize the email thread with a client, it doesn’t make things up: it reads your actual emails. When you ask it to draw conclusions from an Excel spreadsheet, it works on your cells, not on a generic example.

That’s why, when someone asks what Microsoft’s ChatGPT is called, the correct answer isn’t just “Copilot,” but “Copilot, the AI assistant integrated into Microsoft 365.” The difference between the two things is enormous in practice.

What Copilot can do that ChatGPT doesn’t do for you

Let’s get to the specifics, no frills. Copilot in Word drafts documents from a couple of prompts and rewrites paragraphs in whatever tone you ask for. In Excel, it generates complex formulas, creates pivot tables, and detects patterns in your data without you needing to know how to program.

In PowerPoint, it turns a Word document into a decent presentation in under a minute. In Outlook, it summarizes mile-long email chains and drafts responses with the right tone. In Teams, it summarizes meetings you couldn’t attend and extracts pending tasks.

None of this does ChatGPT do out of the box, because ChatGPT isn’t inside those applications. That’s Microsoft Copilot’s real strength: it doesn’t compete in chat, it competes in the workflow.

Copilot Pro and Copilot for Microsoft 365: they’re not the same

Here’s a confusion worth clearing up. There’s free Copilot, integrated into Windows, Bing, and the Microsoft website. There’s Copilot Pro, an individual subscription of about 20 euros a month aimed at individual users who want priority access and extra features in the Office apps. And there’s Copilot for Microsoft 365, the enterprise version paid per user per month that unlocks full integration with the organization’s data.

If you’re self-employed or a student, Copilot Pro is more than enough. If you’re a company with sensitive data, the Microsoft 365 version is the one for you, because it includes security and compliance guarantees that the free version doesn’t have.

The model behind it: OpenAI, but with nuances

Microsoft invested billions in OpenAI, and that gives it preferential access to the most advanced models. Copilot has been incorporating successive versions of GPT, and in 2026 it works with models optimized for productivity tasks, not just conversation.

That means Copilot doesn’t always give the most creative answers on the market. In exchange, it’s more reliable when you ask for specific data from your documents. And in a work environment, that’s worth more than creativity.

It has to be said: Copilot makes mistakes too. It hallucinates just like any LLM. The difference is that Microsoft has put a lot of effort into making sure answers come with references to the original files, so you can verify where each piece of data comes from.

Copilot in Windows: the assistant that already comes built in

Since the latest updates, Copilot is integrated into Windows 11 as a side panel. You can ask it to change your system settings, summarize a PDF you have on your desktop, or find a lost file among folders.

It’s not perfect. Sometimes it’s faster to do it by hand. But for repetitive tasks or for people who aren’t comfortable with the system, it saves real time. And that’s exactly what’s expected of an AI assistant in 2026.

Is it worth paying for Copilot?

It depends on your usage, but I’ll go out on a limb. If you use Office daily and bill by the hour, Copilot Pro pays for itself just by saving you two or three hours a month. If you only want it to ask about curiosities, stick with the free version or with ChatGPT.

The mistake is paying for Copilot expecting it to be a better ChatGPT. It isn’t. It’s something else: an assistant integrated into your tools. If you understand that, you’ll get the most out of it. If not, it will disappoint you.

The immediate future of Copilot

Microsoft is betting heavily on AI agents: systems that not only respond but execute complete tasks for you. Booking a meeting, updating a CRM, generating a weekly report. Copilot is the gateway to that model.

In 2026, integrations with Power Platform and Dynamics 365 are already emerging that allow Copilot to trigger entire workflows. That definitively distances it from the “Microsoft’s ChatGPT” label and brings it closer to that of an AI automation platform.

So now you know what Microsoft’s ChatGPT is called. It’s called Copilot, and although it shares DNA with ChatGPT, it’s on a different path. One more grounded, more focused on real work and less on brilliant conversation. Whether that works for you or not is up to you.