Microsoft’s AI Copilot Makeover shows it and speaks it
Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant has a sleek new look and a host of new and improved features. The tech giant clearly wants more people to use its AI tools and make them a part of people’s lives as much as possible.
It’s a strategy also being followed by Google and Microsoft’s other AI rivals. To stand out, Microsoft has given Copilot a makeover on how you interact with the AI and its capabilities when you do. Copilot adapts noticeably faster to your preferences and does this in more ways than before. You can test the new Copilot experience on the web, a mobile device, or through the Windows app.
“Copilot is there for you, in your corner, by your side and always strongly attuned to your interests.” Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman explained in a blog post. “We are not so much creating a static tool as establishing a dynamic, emergent and evolving interaction. It will provide you with unwavering support to help you show up the way you really want in your daily life, a new means to to facilitate human connections and equal performance.”
Below we’ve highlighted some of the most notable and intriguing changes and new features.
Vote
The loudest upgrade is the new Copilot Voice feature that lets you talk to Copilot vocally. It’s a bit like OpenAI’s new AdvancedVoice mode, in that you can talk to the AI as you would a human, even interrupting mid-word, and hear what it says back.
You can select four voices for the experience, with multiple accents, but only in English for now. Copilot Voice can also be your newsreader with the Copilot Daily feature. You can get audio summaries of the latest news and weather, personalized based on your location and interests. The AI relies on Microsft’s partners, including Reuters, Axel Springer, Hearst and the Financial Times, to gather and summarize the news.
Vision and images
Copilot can now not only talk, but also ‘see’. The new Copilot Vision feature allows the AI to look at what’s on your screen, whether it’s a website or a personal document. The AI can suggest ideas for related information or analysis, and even suggest products that better suit your interests and budget if you ask, simply by using the vision on the screen. It won’t work universally yet, but it can handle most popular websites. This is an opt-in feature, so none of the data is stored or used for training unless you agree. It is striking that Copilot Vision is not limited to printed text; it can even read handwriting.
For your own visual creations, Copilot helps improve both photos and other images. The AI-powered Super Resolution feature in the Photos app can enhance old and low-resolution images to 4K without becoming grainy or grainy. And when you create an image in Paint, you can now use the AI-powered Generative Fill and Generative Erase tools to add or remove bits from an image using a text prompt or brush strokes.
Personalized companion
Microsoft’s main goal with Copilot is for people to consider it a useful tool, both online and when working on a PC. The look of the new Copilot is no longer the usual chatbot, but now works like cards making you feel more involved in running the AI. There is also the new main page that adapts to your interests, called Copilot Discover. Your conversations with the AI and stated preferences will change the Discover page to provide searches and suggestions that are relevant to you, encouraging long-term use.
A subtle but potentially very useful upgrade is the way Copilot helps you find and do things on your PC. For example, Click to Do is an AI feature that places interactive commands on your screen and offers suggestions relevant to what’s on the screen, such as summarizing text, changing an image, or looking something up online. If you’re working on a presentation, Copilot may offer to help you expand the text in one section, remove the background from an image, or even send someone an email if you include their address in the presentation.
There’s also the new Recall tool, which helps you find things you recently viewed on your computer, document, web page, video, or anything else. The AI can remember and recognize what it was and retrieve it for you, even if you don’t remember the location or file name. Windows Search on Copilot+ PCs even finds files and settings you haven’t opened yet, using a description you write.