I first saw a demo of Copilot Pages, Microsoft’s answer to Google’s NotebookLM, at the company’s 50th anniversary event in Redmond, WA. Both apps use generative AI knowledge bases and language reasoning models to add relevant information and organizational structure to your research or study projects. Pages debuted as a tool for Microsoft 365 Business users, but now anyone can try it for free. I tested Copilot Pages with a few different topics, including one dear to my heart—hummingbirds in Mexico. It didn’t disappoint in my hands-on testing, and I find it more intuitive than Google’s alternative, even if the latter has a few more features.
How to Get Copilot Pages
To start using Copilot pages, just open the Copilot app (available for Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows) or go to the Copilot website. You need to sign in to an account on the apps, but not on the web. Regardless, you should still sign in if you intend to access your pages on more than one device.
Menu for opening Copilot Pages (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
You can launch Copilot Pages in two ways. To access it directly, click the drop-down menu from the New Chat icon at the top left and switch to “Create New Page.” (The default is “Create New Conversation.”) You should then see a blank workspace with a “Start Typing…” prompt in the center and a “Your Page Is Ready” message in the sidebar.
Converting a Copilot AI chat into a page (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Alternatively, you can just start using Copilot normally and then choose “Edit in a Page” once you get a result you want to use for studying or research. (In the mobile app, you see just the icon to the left of those words.)
What’s It Like to Use Copilot Pages?
When you start a page, you see a sidebar that explains what’s going on before you even type anything. “This is your space to brainstorm, draft, and iterate,” reads the sidebar text. “I’m here to help along the way.” Lower down in the sidebar is a box where you can start a typical AI chat. You can change the name of the page simply by clicking on it.
Starting a page from scratch in Copilot Pages (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Copilot Pages doesn’t necessarily do all the work for you. You can type information in the central blank space, or paste or upload content. It’s also possible to tell Copilot to add things to the page from the chat box in the sidebar.
Formatting options in Copilot Pages (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Once you type on the page, you can highlight your text to see formatting options: bold, bullet list, heading, and so on. A prominent Ask text box with the Copilot logo helps you get info on your topic from Copilot’s AI resources. Results appear in the right-side panel rather than directly on the page. You can prompt the AI to add this info to the main page, but I would prefer a dedicated “Add to Page” button. It’s possible to regenerate answers if the original result is not to your liking.
For my test hummingbird research project, I asked Copilot to list all the species in Mexico in order from most to least common, along with their conservation status and region. Here’s the bottom section of what I got:
Talble creation in Copilot Pages (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
When you ask to add information or revisions to the page, you get the options to apply or reject the suggestions (see screen above). Copilot can also edit the page content based on chat requests. For example, when I asked it to sort the species list based on eBird data, it did so directly on the page rather than adding another list to the sidebar. Of course, I had to confirm this edit first with the “Apply Revision” prompt.
In another test, I pasted one of my articles onto a page. It took a while for Copilot to strip out all the ads and images. When I asked the AI to organize the article better, it primarily converted the text to bulleted lists. I suppose that is an acceptable take on organization, but we pride ourselves on our sparkling prose here at PCMag.
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Restructuring text in Copilot Pages (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Copilot Pages vs. Google’s NotebookLM
Google’s NotebookLM offers more features and provides more guidance than Copilot Pages. That said, it has a more complicated layout and is less flexible. Copilot Pages is more akin to a simple notebook that you can amplify with AI.
NotebookLM Is All About Sources
When you start a notebook in NotebookLM, you see a helpful dialog box, which prominently features an Upload sources button. You can add web links, choose documents from Google Drive, or paste text. Alternatively, you can click Discover Sources and type a prompt about your topic of interest. NotebookLM strongly emphasizes the sources of information you add via the above methods, and the integrated AI chat derives all of its information exclusively from them. For comparison, Copilot Pages uses the full span of Copilot’s knowledge base for chat requests.
Google NotebookLM start page (Credit: Google/PCMag)
NotebookLM’s Setup is More Complex and Restrictive
The main NotebookLM interface has three panels. Your sources appear in the left panel, an AI chat box is in the middle panel, and AI chat results and your notes appear in the right-hand panel. You can edit the notes you create, but not the ones based on the AI chat responses. It’s not possible to add AI information from within notes you create, either, which you can do in Copilot Pages with its Ask button.
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NotebookLM interface (Credit: Google/PCMag)
You also can’t upload files to the chat, unlike with Copilot Pages. Unfortunately, neither service lets you add images to your page or note.
Comparing Results of Research Queries
In testing, NotebookLM didn’t respond exactly or fully to my request. Like with Copilot Pages, I asked it to name all hummingbird species in Mexico in the table, along with their regions. NotebokLM included just 17 species in the table and listed their habitats (such as gardens or mountains) rather than their regions (such as Southern Mexico).
I suspect that Copilot Pages’ underlying natural language processing abilities and OpenAI models give it the advantage here. After all, ChatGPT comes out ahead in our head-to-head comparison with Gemini. That said, these limitations could also be due to NotebookLM restricting its knowledge base to the sources it finds at the start or ones that you specify.
Notebook LM Has More Features
NotebookLM includes a few goodies not available in Copilot Pages. For example, it offers audio overviews, mind maps, study guides, a timeline for sources, and video overviews. As with Pages, you can share a web-hosted version of your document, though. But NotebookLM also lets you share a notebook for co-editing and maintains public notebooks on topics such as investing advice and parenting.
What About Privacy?
In terms of privacy, Google has a leg up on Microsoft: NotebookLM doesn’t use your entries for AI training, while Copilot Pages does by default. However, you can change the latter behavior in Pages’ settings.
Privacy options in Copilot Pages (Credit: Microsoft/PCMag)
Is Copilot Pages Worth Using?
If you want an AI tool that creates a persistent document you can build on, format, and organize, rather than one that just provides a quick answer, Copilot Pages is worth a try. It can sometimes get things wrong (like any generative AI tool), but the information Copilot provided in my tests was largely on target. And, as always, I appreciate that it will correct itself if you suspect something is wrong. Copilot Pages would absolutely benefit from the ability to include images and more collaboration features, but I still recommend it if you want a more flexible and focused alternative to NotebookLM.
About Michael Muchmore
Principal Writer, Software
