Forum Discussion
Hallucinations with copilot in Word
Hi,
I've been working with copilot in Word drafting and editing documents, primarily professional development materials. I was under the impression that i could direct copilot to search the web when asking it to draft or rewrite a passage, but apparently that's not true. I found that copilot actually can't access the web while working in Word, but it doesn't tell you that. Instead it hallucinates quotes, statistics and citations. Please LMK if I am misunderstanding this situation.
1 Reply
- Copilot in Word generates content based on language patterns it has found throughout the internet. Sometimes its results will be very similar to existing internet content. Or, Copilot might generate the same or very similar content for multiple people who are prompting Copilot in the same way.
For example, everyone who instructs Copilot to create a "recipe for apple pie" is likely to wind up with identical or nearly identical content. When originality is a concern, check for similarity to online sources (on the Home tab, go to Editor, and scroll down to Similarity).
https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/frequently-asked-questions-about-copilot-in-word-7fa03043-130f-40f3-9e8b-4356328ee072
