What is Microsoft Copilot, and do customers use it to find businesses?
Microsoft describes Copilot as an AI-powered assistant that helps with work: creating content, finding information, summarizing documents, emails and meetings, and analyzing data. Microsoft says it works inside Microsoft 365 apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, and in a Copilot mobile app. In Pew Research Center’s February 2026 survey, 17% of U.S. adults said they ever use it, behind ChatGPT and Gemini.
What Microsoft says Copilot is
Microsoft’s page for individual plans calls Copilot “the AI for work”. Its FAQ says Copilot is “an AI-powered assistant designed to help you be more productive”, and lists what it can do: create content, find information, summarize documents, emails and meetings, analyze data and get answers faster.
Where customers meet it
Microsoft says Copilot works across its Microsoft 365 experiences and in apps such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, where it can help create, edit, summarize and analyze content. Separately, the Copilot mobile app offers a conversational chat for asking questions, creating content and doing research. So a customer may meet Copilot while writing a document or reading email, or by opening the app and asking a question.
Do customers use it to find businesses?
It can be used that way, but no source cited here measures how many people do. Microsoft’s description on its page centers on work tasks.
In Pew Research Center’s survey of 5,119 U.S. adults, conducted February 17 to 23, 2026, 17% said they ever use Copilot. In Pew’s chart it ranks third among seven chatbots, behind ChatGPT at 44% and Gemini at 24% and ahead of Meta AI at 14%.
Pew also reports that about four in ten U.S. adults (42%) say they ever use AI chatbots to search for information. That figure covers chatbots in general, not Copilot alone, and finding a local business is not among the reasons in that chart. The simplest way to learn whether your own customers use Copilot is to ask every new inquiry how they found you, and record “AI answer” as the source when an assistant was involved.
What it means for a business
Treat Copilot as one more place a customer may ask about you, alongside Google search, other assistants, referrals and reviews. Like other assistants, it can get details wrong; the related answer on whether AI assistants get facts wrong explains why that is worth checking. To see what it says about you, add it to the monthly check set out in the related answer on checking what assistants say about your business. The related answer on how many people use AI assistants has Pew’s wider numbers. No one can promise that Copilot, or any assistant, will recommend a particular business.
Sources
- Microsoft, "Microsoft Copilot Plans for Individuals | Microsoft 365"
- Pew Research Center, "Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact" (June 17, 2026)
Related answers
- How do you check what ChatGPT says about your business?
- Do AI assistants get facts about businesses wrong?
- How many people use AI assistants like ChatGPT?
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