Note: The voice features referenced in this article are being released gradually and may not yet be available to all users. General availability to all users will be released soon.
When starting a new voice chat, users can have a natural and interactive conversation with Copilot just by speaking. Voice chat provides a faster, easier, and more intuitive way to work with Copilot through a natural voice conversation, grounded in work and web data. Talk to Copilot like a personal assistant – interrupting and redirecting at any time – to prepare for the workday, create documents, understand topics, and quickly search for information in the office, frontline, or on the go. This feature leverages web and enterprise Graph grounding to improve response accuracy and assist in work-context queries.
Talk to Copilot like a personal assistant – interrupting and redirecting at any time – to brainstorm, prepare for a meeting or the day, and quickly search for information. You can search the web and your work context from Microsoft Graph just by talking. It can help explain concepts, brainstorm, co-create, translate, and more.
Work doesn’t stop at your desk. Voice chats in Microsoft 365 Copilot keep you productive anywhere—hands-free on mobile or multitasking at your desktop. Grounded in your work and web data, it helps you:
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Prepare and manage your day: Get a summary of your calendar in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app, triage your inbox and draft replies with “voice catch up" in Outlook mobile, ask Copilot for meeting details such as pre-reads and agendas, and search and clarify information on the go. Use Copilot as your coach to rehearse content.
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Brainstorm and create: Share quick thoughts with Copilot, and it will ask clarifying questions to help structure them. Keep working while talking to Copilot hands-free using voice.
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On mobile and desktop, select
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Voice chats in Copilot on Windows desktop can also be activated through Windows shortcuts. Press the Copilot key, or for devices without a Copilot key, the Win+C shortcut to open the
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Say “Hey Copilot” to open the
To turn on "Hey Copilot," the user must turn on the setting. In the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on Windows, go to ... Settings and more, then
This feature is currently only available on Windows desktop. Mac will follow shortly.
To mute or end the conversation, the user must select
After 30 seconds without activity with the Quick View controls, a notice will appear on screen warning that Copilot will automatically end the session in 30 seconds. Background noise might cause Copilot to keep listening even after you've finished speaking.
Dictation in Microsoft 365 Copilot lets you speak to convert your voice into written text, ideal for composing content hands-free. Voice chat, on the other hand, enables a two-way spoken conversation with Copilot, allowing you to ask questions and receive audio responses in real time. Dictation is focused on text input, while voice chat offers a more interactive, interruptible, and dynamic experience.
Voice chat in Microsoft 365 Copilot is now available on the web and in the Microsoft 365 app on mobile (iOS and Android) and desktop (Windows and Mac). It will be rolling out across the Microsoft 365 Copilot ecosystem soon.
Voice features aren't currently available for users without a Microsoft 365 Copilot license; however, it will be available to those users soon.
Voice features will be available to Government Community Cloud (GCC) and GCC High customers in the future, but we have no date to share at this time.
Voice features are available in all languages supported by Microsoft 365 Copilot. For a complete list, see Supported languages for Microsoft 365 Copilot. Some words may be more prone to language or pronunciation errors.
No, voice activation responds only to 'Hey Copilot' in English. Once activated, conversations can continue in any of the supported Copilot languages. See Supported languages for Microsoft 365 Copilot for details.
Today, not all capabilities supported using text are available while in a voice chat – such as image creation, file creation, and at-mentioning agents.
While users are in a Microsoft 365 Copilot voice chat, Copilot can respond using existing memories already stored in the user's
All memories that can be used for Copilot responses in voice chat are visible and manageable by users in their
Today we support only one voice option. More voice options will be available in the future.
Voice features in Microsoft 365 Copilot are subject to service capacity. Users with a Microsoft 365 Copilot license will have priority access to voice in Copilot. Users will be informed in-product when they are approaching service capacity.
Learn about access to Copilot services at Standard versus priority access to features in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.
No, voice chats work in the background, allowing users to move between apps and multi-task.
Yes, users can find their past chats, including voice chats, under Chats in Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat. Once a previous chat is selected, users can resume the chat using text in the Message Copilot compose box.
Users can continue a voice chat in the background while moving to different apps or with a locked screen on their desktop. Audio from voice chats is interrupted if users play audio from a different app.
The “Hey Copilot” Quick View controls automatically turn off when the desktop locks, so voice activation won't work while the screen is locked.
Voice chats aren't currently supported in Copilot agents but will be coming soon.
Yes, live transcripts are supported by default on desktop. They can be turned off for a less distracting experience through the Closed Caption (CC) setting on the top right of the application. On mobile, live transcripts are turned off by default but can be turned on through the same Closed Caption (CC) button on mobile applications during a voice chat.
If the user turns on Listen for “Hey Copilot” in both Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot, voice activation will stay active in Microsoft 365 Copilot and automatically turn off in Microsoft Copilot.
Voice and text conversations are inherently different in nature. Copilot uses different models for these different capabilities to best fit users’ needs. Users could experience shorter responses when using voice, but accuracy and quality of responses won't be compromised.
No, voice in Copilot is not available through CarPlay at this time.
Vision features aren't currently available in Microsoft 365 Copilot for any commercial customers.
Text transcripts from voice conversations are stored and managed in the same way as text conversations in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app. No user or Copilot audio is stored. For more information about data retention for Copilot, see Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
If feedback is turned on, conversation audio is temporarily stored for users to provide feedback to Microsoft. Background noise may be included in users’ audio. After 48 hours, this audio data is deleted. For more information, see Providing feedback about Microsoft Copilot with Microsoft 365 apps.
There is no feature-specific toggle for admins to turn off voice features in Copilot or “Hey Copilot” voice activation.
This feature measures the usage, engagement rate, and abandonment rate of voice chats. The quality of responses is measured offline through testing the audio and text outputs of the model on relevance, search, and hallucination criteria across different languages, environments, and accents. For more information, please visit Transparency Note for Microsoft 365 Copilot to learn more.
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Users are able to speak naturally while in voice chats and have the ability to interrupt audio responses by simply speaking. Copilot will stop speaking and listen to the user when interrupted and provide new responses based on new voice input.
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For the best response quality, users are encouraged to reduce background noise during active voice chats.
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New audio-specific safety mechanisms are integrated into the real-time GPT-4o model used for a voice chat, as outlined in OpenAI's official documentation. There are also additional checks for intellectual property, copyright, jailbreaks, and harmful content to be consistent with Microsoft’s AI Safety practices.
While there is some background noise suppression, background speech may still get picked up in a voice chat. Users can avoid this by using the feature in a quiet environment or without other speakers close by. Further improvements to usability and background noise cancelation are in development.
No - this feature operates locally and only activates with “Hey Copilot” without recording or storing any conversation. This feature is fully compliant with Enterprise data protection in Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat.
Voice chat in Microsoft 365 Copilot doesn’t use user data to train the model.
Generative AI features strive to provide accurate and informative responses, based on the data available. However, answers may not always be accurate as they are generated based on patterns and probabilities in language data. Use your own judgment and double check the facts before making decisions or taking action based on the responses.
While these features have mitigations in place to avoid sharing unexpected offensive content in results and take steps to prevent displaying potentially harmful topics, you may still see unexpected results. We're constantly working to improve our technology to proactively address issues in line with our responsible AI principles.
Copilot includes filters to block offensive language in the prompts and to avoid synthesizing suggestions in sensitive contexts. We continue to work on improving the filter system to more intelligently detect and remove offensive outputs. If you see offensive outputs, please submit feedback by using the thumbs-up/thumbs-down icons so that we can improve our safeguards. Microsoft takes this challenge very seriously, and we are committed to addressing it.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is built on the Microsoft comprehensive approach to security, compliance, and privacy.
If you’re using Microsoft 365 Copilot in your organization (with your work or school account), see Data, Privacy, and Security for Microsoft 365 Copilot.
Once a voice chat ends, use the thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons to provide feedback or suggestions for improvement.
