Last week in the office, I was trying to explain to colleagues in their early twenties what teletext was. (If you’re old enough to know, you know.) Even with the help of pictorial aids they were, understandably, pretty baffled. My favourite question was “Why’s it so pixelated?” 

One of the things I wonder is, when they are my age and have grandchildren, will they be explaining what keyboards and typing were? And will the incredulous questions sound like this: “So you actually had to make text appear using your fingers?”

This time in the A-Z of Copilot, V is for Voice. Typing’s not the only way to interact with Copilot, you can speak to it too.

What is Copilot Voice?

Copilot Voice is when you have a spoken conversation with Microsoft Copilot. You talk, it talks back, you can interrupt, respond, it’s all a bit uncanny. 

It’s still grounded in your work data, so it can pull from your calendar, emails, and files while you natter on. 

You start a voice chat by hitting “Start a new voice chat” next to “Start dictation” in the bottom-right of the Message Copilot box.

You can use it on desktop and mobile (with the right licence etc).

Why or when would you Copilot Voice?

I never had a good answer for this. My role is primarily desk-based, so I could never think of a scenario in which I’d find talking to Copilot useful instead of typing. 

Also, I find a weird value in typing prompts into the chat box. Having to type means I’m forced to think my words through while I’m trying to direct Copilot to get me what I need. 

Then I had an ear infection and had to spend the start of my mornings with a horizontal head while ear drops did their work. It turns out you really need your head vertical to do typing at a laptop… 

What I could do was have a back-and-forth chat with Copilot and at least get prepared for my day. I asked it what was on my calendar, and any emails that looked like they needed my response, something I’d usually do at a glance while sitting at my desk. And, in an accent, Copilot told me what I needed to know. 

I have used it earlier on in this series too. I prepped a meeting agenda out loud on the school run back in M is for Meetings. In Q is for Questions I recommended just blurting your messy thoughts at it when writing feels like too much friction. Voice is the tool for exactly those moments; hands busy (or head full of ear drops), but brain bouncing around. 

Three things I learned using Copilot Voice 

1. I mostly use it on mobile when I’m away from my desk  

 These are the scenarios where I’ve found voice helpful: 

A quick diary rundown – “What’s in my calendar today?” and having it read back to me while I’m away from my laptop. 

Getting thoughts out of my head – Transcribing a ramble I want to come back to later. It’s easier and faster to blurt out words than typing, and I don’t lose the thread while I’m hunting for the right word. (Note – I wouldn’t do this in an open-plan office out of embarrassment, so that’s why I’d be on mobile elsewhere…) 

Meeting prep on the move – Didn’t get time to prep for a meeting this morning and suddenly started thinking about it on the way to school dropoff. I used Copilot Voice to talk through what the meeting’s for, who’s in the room, and what I need out of it, while walking to the car, so that it could offer a structure for an agenda I could pick up later. 

2. The Copilot Voice exchange lives in your chat history like any other Copilot chat 

I don’t know why, but I wasn’t expecting to talk to Copilot on my phone in a car park, and then see the chat transcript appear in my history in Copilot on my desktop. The joined up experience means that nothing gets lost in between moments. The thing I rambled on the pavement is sitting there waiting when I got to my desk, ready for me to use it for the next action.  

3. While it’s great at telling, it won’t yet DO 

This part is disappointing but I’m sure it will change. While I laid there waiting for my ear drops to fix me, Copilot told me about all the things on my calendar and in my inbox. Almost every time it told me something, I could think of a related action. I asked Copilot if it could complete any of those actions for me, but the answer I got (very politely) was no. 

Here’s what I wanted and didn’t get:

❌ Draft emails into Outlook – It’ll happily help me with the wording. But it can’t put the draft in Outlook. So I’m back to copy-and-paste, which rather defeats the “hands busy, on the move” point of using Voice in the first place. 

❌ Set a reminder – “Could you remind me to…” – no, it can’t. 

❌ Move a meeting – Not even the ‘empty’ placeholder ones with no attendees. I’ve got calendar blocks with nobody invited and no agenda, purely holding space, and Voice still can’t nudge them half an hour to the left.

Having Voice read out my diary is lovely but the second I hear my day out loud, my brain fires off eight follow-on actions. Move that. Chase this. Draft that reply. Block time for the other thing. And Voice can’t do a single one of them. It surfaces all the work and then can’t touch any of it.

Copilot is getting very good at showing me what needs doing. It’s the doing that keeps landing back on my plate.

I’m hopeful this gap closes over time. Agentic actions in Outlook and calendar management have been rolling out via the Frontier early-access programme, so the ability to draft, remind, and shuffle by voice may well arrive. It just hasn’t reached me yet.

TLDR

Copilot Voice seems more an input method than a feature. It’s brilliant when talking beats typing: capturing rambling thoughts, prepping on the move, getting a diary rundown, and (the underrated bit) leaving it all sitting in your chat history for when you’re back at your desk. Where it falls down is action; it can’t draft into Outlook, set reminders, or move meetings, not even empty placeholders. It surfaces the work beautifully and then hands it all straight back to you. Some of that may close as agentic features roll out via Frontier. For now, treat Voice as the thing that gets the thought out, not the thing that gets it done.

What’s your experience with Copilot Voice? Have you found a good use for it beyond it just telling you things? Do you remember teletext?? Share in the comments.