Key takeaways
- Free Copilot covers chat, web answers, voice and image creation; paid consumer plans add Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook with higher limits.
- Copilot is not a video editor; Microsoft's video generation lives in separate tools, and Clipchamp is the place to assemble videos.
- A Copilot+ PC is a Windows laptop with a neural processing unit fast enough to run Microsoft's on-device AI features.
- For a Copilot+ laptop, check the NPU, at least 16 GB of RAM, battery life and the keyboard and screen you will use every day.
- Plan names and bundles change; confirm on Microsoft's current plans page before paying.
Free Microsoft Copilot gives you chat, web answers with citations, voice and image creation. Microsoft's paid consumer plans, which started as Copilot Pro and have since been folded into Microsoft 365 consumer subscriptions, add Copilot inside Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, higher limits and earlier access to new features. Copilot does not edit videos itself, though Microsoft offers AI video tools elsewhere. On laptops, "Copilot" means the Copilot key and app, and Copilot+ PCs are Windows laptops with a fast neural processing unit for on-device AI. This page covers each point and how to choose a laptop.
Copilot vs Copilot Pro: what is the difference?
Free Copilot is the general assistant on the web, in Windows and on phones. Copilot Pro was Microsoft's paid consumer upgrade, adding Copilot in the Microsoft 365 apps, priority access at busy times and higher limits; Microsoft has since moved these benefits into its Microsoft 365 consumer plans.
In practice, the free version is enough for questions, writing help, summaries and images. The paid tier matters if you want Copilot working inside your Word documents, Excel sheets, PowerPoint decks and Outlook mail with a personal account, or you hit usage limits often. Work and school accounts are different again: they use Microsoft 365 Copilot or Copilot Chat under the organisation's licence. Because Microsoft renames and rebundles consumer plans, check the current plan comparison before buying.
Which Copilot Pro features are free?
Many former Pro-only features are now in free Copilot: access to strong models, web-grounded answers, voice conversations, image creation within limits, and vision features that understand images you share.
What generally remains paid on consumer plans is Copilot inside the Microsoft 365 desktop and web apps with a personal account, higher usage limits for heavy features, and early access to experiments. Free use also has daily limits on things like image creation and the most advanced modes. If you are a student with a college Microsoft 365 account, check whether your institution provides Copilot Chat or Microsoft 365 Copilot, which may give you more than any consumer plan. Microsoft's plan pages list the current split.
Is there a tutorial for Copilot Pro?
Yes. Microsoft's support pages have guides for Copilot in each Microsoft 365 app, and the quickest way to learn is to try one task a day in the app you already use.
Also asked as: tutorial copilot pro
A five-day plan:
- Word: turn rough notes into a structured report, then ask for a shorter version for a different reader.
- PowerPoint: create a draft deck from that Word file and fix the design yourself.
- Excel: format a dataset as a table and ask three specific questions about it.
- Outlook: summarise a long thread and draft a reply from a one-line instruction.
- Copilot app: plan a week of study with deadlines, then ask it to make a checklist.
Write prompts with the goal, the audience, the source material and the format you want.
Does Copilot make videos?
Not in the chat itself. Copilot creates text and images, but it does not edit or render videos. Microsoft offers AI video generation separately, and its Clipchamp editor is where you assemble a finished video.
Also asked as: does copilot do videos
Copilot is still useful for video work: it can write a script, a shot list, captions and a title and description, and generate images for scenes or thumbnails. You then record and edit in Clipchamp, which is built into Windows, or another editor. For explainer videos, a script from Copilot plus your own voice-over and screen recording usually beats generated footage. Check what is current, because Microsoft has been adding video features to its creative tools.
Can Copilot create AI videos?
Microsoft has offered AI video generation through separate tools rather than the main Copilot chat, including a video creator in the Bing mobile app built on OpenAI's Sora model. Availability depends on region and the tool's current status.
Generated clips are short and best used as B-roll or illustrations, not as a full video. Write a specific prompt: subject, setting, camera movement, lighting and style, for example "slow aerial shot over green rice fields at sunrise, cinematic". Generate several versions and pick the best. Then edit the clips together with narration and text in Clipchamp. Label AI-generated footage when you publish it, and never generate videos of real people without their consent.
Can Copilot make videos from photos?
Not directly in Copilot chat. To turn photos into a video, use Clipchamp or the Photos app's video tools on Windows, which assemble images with transitions, music and text, or ask Copilot to write an ffmpeg command that builds a slideshow.
In Clipchamp, import your photos, drag them onto the timeline, set how long each shows, add transitions, music and captions, then export. If you want the photos to move, for example a slow zoom or pan, use Clipchamp's motion effects. For command-line users, ask Copilot "write an ffmpeg command that turns img001.jpg to img030.jpg into a video showing each image for three seconds", run it, and check the result. Image-to-video AI models can animate a single photo, but they live in separate tools.
Can Copilot watch or work with videos?
Copilot in Microsoft Edge can summarise and answer questions about some online videos, typically by using their transcripts. It does not reliably analyse the visual content of every frame of a long video.
For YouTube videos with captions, open the video in Edge, open Copilot in the sidebar and ask for a summary or key points with timestamps. For your own recordings, generate a transcript first, for example with Word's Transcribe or Teams for meetings, then give the transcript to Copilot. For visual questions, take screenshots of the moments that matter and share those as images. Copilot cannot record video for you; for screen recordings use the Windows Snipping Tool or Clipchamp.
What is Copilot in a laptop?
On a Windows laptop, Copilot is the built-in AI assistant you open from the taskbar or the Copilot key on newer keyboards. On Copilot+ PCs, extra AI features run on the laptop's own neural processing unit instead of the cloud.
Also asked as: what is copilot in laptop
Every recent Windows 11 laptop can run the Copilot app, which uses Microsoft's cloud models. Copilot+ PCs add on-device features, such as improved Windows Studio camera effects, live captions with translation, image tools in Photos and Paint, and search that understands natural language, with availability varying by region. The Copilot key simply launches the assistant. If you mainly use Copilot for chat and writing, any decent Windows laptop works; the Copilot+ label matters for the on-device features.
What is the best Copilot+ laptop?
The best Copilot+ laptop is the one that fits your work, budget and comfort. Copilot+ models come from Microsoft Surface, Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, Acer and Samsung, with Qualcomm Snapdragon X, Intel Core Ultra or AMD Ryzen AI processors.
Also asked as: best copilot plus laptop · best copilot ai laptop
Choose by use:
- Long battery life and light weight: Snapdragon-based models are strong, but check that the apps you need run well on Arm.
- Development and compatibility: Intel or AMD models run every Windows app natively, including older tools.
- Light gaming or GPU work: look for models with a discrete graphics card.
Read reviews that test battery life, heat and keyboard quality, and try the keyboard and screen in a shop if you can.
What should I look for in a Copilot AI laptop?
Look for a Copilot+ certified processor with a capable neural processing unit, at least 16 GB of RAM, a fast SSD of 512 GB or more if you code or edit media, a good screen and long battery life.
Microsoft's Copilot+ PC requirements include an NPU of at least 40 trillion operations per second, 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage, so certified laptops meet a baseline. For students in computer science, 16 GB is the practical minimum and 32 GB is comfortable for Docker, virtual machines and local AI models. The NPU helps Windows AI features but does not replace a GPU for training models; for serious machine learning work, use cloud GPUs or Google Colab. Check ports, warranty and service centres near you before buying.
Sources
GenAI engineer and AI product builder with 2+ years shipping production-grade AI systems: RAG pipelines, fine-tuned LLMs, hybrid retrieval and multi-modal apps across vision, speech and OCR, architected end to end from ingestion to deployment. Leads engineering for SCULT INDIA's 14-member team, founded the 500+ member TechVerse Enclave community and has mentored 200+ students. Three hackathon first prizes: Changethon 2025 (IIT Roorkee), Product Genesis at Vividhotsava 2025 (CSJMU) and BYTEBATTLE (MeetKats).
Open to GenAI roles, hackathon judging, mentorship sessions and guest talks at colleges. For campus sessions the inviting institution covers the visit end to end: travel (a First AC train ticket for journeys up to five hours, a flight for anything longer), accommodation, meals, and pickup and drop; the honorarium and workshop fees are negotiable on WhatsApp or on the call, and requests are welcome from institutions that can cover the visit this way. Email pranjulrathour41@gmail.com.
