What is Copilot in Fabric?

Copilot and other generative AI features in preview bring new ways to transform and analyze data, generate insights, and create visualizations and reports in Microsoft Fabric and Power BI. This article introduces you to Copilot in Fabric and tells you how it works in the different workloads. It also discusses data security and privacy, responsible use, and regional availability.

Copilot in Microsoft Fabric is a generative AI assistive technology that aims to enhance the data analytics experience in the Fabric platform for users. Copilot leverages large-language models (LLMs) that attempt to facilitate user interaction with their data and items in Fabric. People who use Copilot can include people who create, manage, and consume Fabric items, including enterprise developers, self-service users, and business users.

This article helps you to understand how Copilot in Fabric works, including its architecture and cost. The information in this article is intended to guide you and your organization to use and manage Copilot effectively. This article is primarily targeted at:

• BI and analytics directors or managers: Decision makers who are responsible for overseeing the BI program and strategy, and who decide whether to enable and use Copilot in Fabric or other AI tools.

• Fabric administrators: The people in the organization who oversee Microsoft Fabric and its various workloads. Fabric administrators oversee who can use Copilot in Fabric for each of these workloads and monitor how Copilot usage affects available Fabric capacity.

• Data architects: The people responsible for designing, building, and managing the platforms and architecture that support data and analytics in the organization. Data architects consider the usage of Copilot in architecture design.

• Center of Excellence (COE), IT, and BI teams: The teams that are responsible for facilitating successful adoption and use of data platforms like Fabric in the organization. These teams and individuals might use AI tools like Copilot themselves, but also support and mentor self-service users in the organization to benefit from them, as well.

There are different Copilots in each of the Fabric workloads, like Data Factory, Data Science, and Power BI. Furthermore, Copilot experiences are also available from Power BI Desktop if users have access to a workspace that uses a Fabric capacity with an F64 or higher SKU.

Enabling and effectively using Copilot in your organization requires deliberate thought and planning. Generative AI is an evolving technology with specific nuances and considerations to keep in mind, so it's important to apply generative AI tools like Copilot to the appropriate problems and scenarios. Furthermore, Copilot in Power BI consumes your available Fabric capacity, meaning that you should manage its usage to avoid overconsumption that can lead to throttling and disruption of your other Fabric operations.

Enable Copilot

Before your business can start using Copilot capabilities in Microsoft Fabric, you need to enable Copilot.

Copilot experiences

You can enable and use Copilot across the various Fabric workloads, and within those workloads you can use different Copilot experiences. While each of these Copilot experiences uses a similar common architecture, they work in distinct ways.

The following diagram depicts an overview of the different items that support Copilot experiences for each Fabric workload.

Copilot in Fabric in the Data Science and Data Engineering workloads

Copilot for Data Engineering and Data Science is an AI-enhanced toolset tailored to support data professionals in their workflow. It provides intelligent code completion, automates routine tasks, and supplies industry-standard code templates to facilitate building robust data pipelines and crafting complex analytical models. Utilizing advanced machine learning algorithms, Copilot offers contextual code suggestions that adapt to the specific task at hand, helping you code more effectively and with greater ease. From data preparation to insight generation, Microsoft Fabric Copilot acts as an interactive aide, lightening the load on engineers and scientists and expediting the journey from raw data to meaningful conclusions.

Copilot in Fabric in the Data Factory workload

Copilot for Data Factory is an AI-enhanced toolset that supports both citizen and professional data wranglers in streamlining their workflow. It provides intelligent code generation to transform data with ease and generates code explanations to help you better understand complex tasks. For more information, see Copilot for Data Factory

Copilot in Fabric in the Data Warehouse workload

Microsoft Copilot for Fabric Data Warehouse is an AI assistant designed to streamline your data warehousing tasks. Key features of Copilot for Warehouse include Natural Language to SQL, code completion, quick actions, and intelligent insights. For more information, see Copilot for Data Warehouse.

Copilot in Fabric in the Power BI workload

Power BI has introduced generative AI that allows you to create reports automatically by selecting the topic for a report or by prompting Copilot for Power BI on a particular topic. You can use Copilot for Power BI to generate a summary for the report page that you just created, and generate synonyms for better Q&A capabilities.

For more information on the features and how to use Copilot for Power BI, see Overview of Copilot for Power BI.

Copilot in Fabric in the Real-Time Intelligence workload

Copilot for Real-Time Intelligence is an advanced AI tool designed to help you explore your data and extract valuable insights. You can input questions about your data, which are then automatically translated into Kusto Query Language (KQL) queries. Copilot streamlines the process of analyzing data for both experienced KQL users and citizen data scientists.

For more information, see Copilot for Real-Time Intelligence overview.

Copilot in the SQL database workload

Copilot for SQL database in Microsoft Fabric is an AI assistant designed to streamline your OLTP database tasks. Key features of Copilot for SQL database include Natural Language to SQL, code completion, quick actions, and document-based Q&A. For more information, see Copilot for SQL database.

Where to find the Copilot experiences in Fabric

The following table provides an overview of the various Copilot experiences available in Fabric, and which workloads and items these experiences apply to. The links in the Copilot experience column take you to the documentation describing how to set up and use these features.

Create your own AI solution accelerators

Build your own copilots

Using the client advisor AI accelerator tool, you can build custom copilot with your enterprise data. The client advisor AI accelerator uses Azure OpenAI Service, Azure AI Search, and Microsoft Fabric to create custom Copilot solutions. This all-in-one custom copilot empowers client advisors to use generative AI across structured and unstructured data optimizing daily tasks and fostering better interactions with clients. To learn more, see the GitHub repo.

Conversational knowledge mining solution accelerator

The conversational knowledge mining solution accelerator is built on top of Microsoft Fabric, Azure OpenAI Service, and Azure AI Speech. It enables customers with large amounts of conversational data to use generative AI to find key phrases alongside the operational metrics. This way, you can discover valuable insights with business impact. To learn more, see the GitHub repo.

How do I use Copilot responsibly?

To learn how to use Copilot responsibly, see the guidance at Privacy, security, and responsible use for Copilot (preview).

Available regions

Available regions for Azure OpenAI Service

To access the prebuilt Azure OpenAI Service, including the Copilot in Fabric, you must have an F64 or higher SKU or a P SKU in the following Fabric regions. The Azure OpenAI Service isn't available on trial SKUs.

The Azure OpenAI Service used to power Fabric Copilot is currently deployed only in US datacenters (East US, East US2, South Central US, and West US) and one EU datacenter (France Central). This differs from the standard Azure OpenAI Service available in the Azure portal, which is accessible in many more regions. For details on standard Azure OpenAI region availability, see Azure OpenAI Service region availability. If your data is outside the US or EU, the feature is disabled by default unless your tenant admin enables Data sent to Azure OpenAI can be processed outside your capacity's geographic region, compliance boundary, or national cloud instance tenant setting. To learn how to get to the tenant settings, see About tenant settings.

Data processing across geographic areas

The prebuilt Azure OpenAI Service and Copilot in Fabric might process your prompts and results (input and output when using Copilot) outside your capacity's geographic region, depending on where the Azure OpenAI service is hosted. The table below shows the mapping of where data is processed across geographic areas for Copilot in Fabric and Azure OpenAI features.

Related content

• What is Microsoft Fabric?
• Copilot for Microsoft Fabric and Power BI: FAQ
• AI services in Fabric (preview)
• Copilot tenant settings