Microsoft is testing small but impactful changes to bring your attention to Copilot AI on the Windows 11 desktop
Microsoft made a relatively minor but quite useful tweak to Copilot during testing, as part of its ongoing efforts to bring the AI Assistant into play more often with Windows 11.
This is part of the new Windows 11 preview build 22635 deployed in the Beta channel, and the change to Copilot is being rolled out gradually, so not all testers in that channel will have it yet.
The idea is a ‘new experience’ for Copilot that aims to boost your productivity in Windows 11. How exactly? When you copy a text or image file, the AI icon in the taskbar will have an animation that activates to let you know that the assistant can help you with that file.
Hovering over the Copilot icon will give you some new options. For example, with an image file, you’ll be presented with choices, including creating an image like the current one, or letting Copilot analyze the image.
Build 22635 doesn’t do much more than these Copilot tweaks, but there’s one more change here for Windows Share. Microsoft ensures that you can use this functionality to share directly to a specific Microsoft Teams channel or group chat. (This is a feature that was previously tested, but was temporarily removed due to bugs – and has now been restored).
As always, check out Microsoft’s blog post for the build to discover the full details and known issues in this preview release.
Analysis: Treading a fine line
The new tweaks for Copilot are simple yet fast ways to interact with files using the AI. Microsoft puts these various capabilities at the user’s fingertips and emphasizes that the AI can help with the said animation on the icon. Clearly the hope is that after Copilot is brought to the attention of whoever is behind the Windows 11 PC, it will result in more use of the AI.
With this change happening in the beta testing channel – the step before Release Preview, where the final touches are put on Windows 11 stable builds for regular users – we’ll likely see it introduced later this year with the 24H2 update.
As for the general concept of actively promoting Copilot, if Microsoft plans to do more in this area, it will have to walk a fine line between helping the user and perhaps getting on the annoying side with too many little phone calls. attention.
There are some aspects of operating system development that strike a fine balance (for example, when recommendations or suggestions in menus become more like advertisements) and sometimes, at least in our humble opinion, Microsoft has strayed beyond acceptable limits. We hope that won’t be the case here, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with the current Copilot tweak in testing.