Enhance online research with Copilot’s AI-powered search features

Update January 23, 2024: At Microsoft, we are always updating and testing features to offer our users the best possible experiences as we experiment with new approaches to functionality. To improve the user experience and streamline our tools that empower creativity, Bing Image Creator is now Designer and Bing Chat is now Copilot. Create wow-worthy images with your words and AI with Designer, and try Copilot, your AI-powered search assistant for the web.

With AI-powered Copilot, you can get answers to a wide variety of questions. Learn how you can make online research faster and easier, whether you’re writing a paper for school or gathering information for a personal project.

Copilot is your AI-powered, conversational search engine

When you ask Copilot a question, it searches the web in real time for answers and provides all the sources it uses to give you as thorough and clear a response as possible, and the ability to double check the answers and information provided. But that’s just the beginning. You can then continue the conversation by asking more questions and accepting suggested additional avenues of research. When you’re researching, Copilot is more than a search engine. It’s more like a research partner with access to all available online information and creative ideas to help you discover unexpected research possibilities.

How Copilot can help with research

Here are some ways Copilot can assist you in your research:

Search for scholarly articles

If you’re new to research, finding scholarly articles can be difficult. Luckily, Copilot can help. For example, you can prompt it with something like, “Help me find scholarly online articles about the fall of the Roman empire from .edu or .org URLs. Exclude wiki pages.” Copilot will then list relevant texts and links that you can explore to further your online research.

Summarize articles

If you’re on a tight deadline to conduct online research, you might not have enough time to read through every single article you encounter. Use Copilot to help you summarize articles and absorb information even faster. You can copy and paste a URL into Copilot and ask it to “provide a summary of this article using only key points.” Copilot will then give you the key points of the article, saving you valuable time.

Ask for an overview

If you’re struggling to understand certain concepts, Copilot can break them down for you. For example, you can prompt Copilot with, “I’m having trouble understanding why the Roman Empire fell.” You can also simply ask, “What factors caused the Roman Empire to disintegrate?” Copilot will use its AI-powered tools to crawl the web to break down the topic for you.

Get citations

If you dread creating citations, Copilot can assist you. You can copy and paste a URL into Copilot and say, “Create a citation for this article using MLA format.” Copilot will then search the web for the correct format and provide you with a citation. You can also ask how certain style guides create citations. For example, you can ask, “How should I structure Chicago Manual of Style citations?” Always double-check your citations to make sure that all of the correct info is in them.

Generate outlines

It can be difficult to know how best to structure a research paper. You can ask Copilot for help. For example, you can prompt it by saying, “Create an outline for a research paper on the topic ‘The fall of the Roman Empire.’” Get as specific as possible—if you’re writing a five-paragraph essay, make sure to add that to your prompt so Copilot creates an outline for the right number of paragraphs.

Find research writing tips

Copilot can provide guidance when it comes to writing research papers. You can ask it for tips like, “How can I create a strong introduction for a research paper?” or “How can I create a thought-provoking thesis statement?” Copilot will crawl the web using its AI-powered technology and give you the best easy-to-understand writing tips.

With Copilot‘s AI-powered, conversational search, researching just got a lot easier and more interactive. See all the ways you can research better and faster by trying Copilot today.