Windows Copilot might be the biggest change Microsoft has ever made to its long-running OS
Clippy, that helpful paperclip sprite that looked at your work in Microsoft Word and did its best to help you, has never been so smart, or even so deeply integrated with Microsoft’s popular computing platform.
Now imagine if Clippy were to get a brain and body transplant that would make him a true genius and then plug him into the deepest parts of Windows 11. That’s Windows Copilot, one of the big reveals at Microsoft’s 2023 Surface Event.
Microsoft showed off a lot of Copilot demos at its packed AI and Surface launch event, but it wasn’t until I got an up-close and personal demo of the Copilot preview in action on a Windows 11 system that I really understood it and its implications for the next generation of Windows 11 users.
When the Windows 11 update arrives on September 26, it will bring with it the Copilot preview. Microsoft tells me it works with any PC that supports Windows 11.
To be clear: Copilot is not an app. It is marginally a utility. It’s more like the voice in Windows 11’s head, a consciousness that is fully aware of everything Windows 11 can do, and a lot of what you do on Windows 11.
Copilot combines all of Microsoft’s best AI work to date. It can provide a large language model (LLM) to understand text and context and produce new text. It integrates Bing Chat to make it conversational (and also supports voice, although I didn’t see that in my demos).
However, there are two things that make Copilot feel like a real part of the Windows 11 experience. The first is, crucially, that copying and pasting Windows 11 activates Copilot, essentially waking it up to the ability to work directly with you.
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In the demo I saw, we opened a Word document filled with a huge list of things to do in New York City. There’s nothing like a sea of ββgray text to make the eyes sparkle. Copilot is not pushy like Clippy. The question did not immediately appear whether it could help. Instead, copying the text caused the problem.
The fact that Copilot can see you performing one of the most basic Windows 11 tasks and use that action to help you is a big deal. Once Copilot sees the clipboard text, it will politely ask if you want to use that text to chat. Once we did that, Copilot’s chat asked what we wanted to do with it (revise, summarize, expand, explain). Because you can be quite specific in your wishes, we asked about the distances between Tribeca and our hotel.
Copliot is deeply embedded in Windows, but is not excluded from the outside. Similar to Bing Chat, Copilot searches for answers on the Internet. Basically it synthesizes the best answers and then, yes, provides quotes and links for it all.
Copilot tries to be extra helpful by going beyond the initial request. In this case it also quickly provided some local attractions.
The other thing that tells you that Copilot isn’t just a plug-in or add-on is that it has its own call and ignore key combination: you use the Windows button and “c.”
In my opinion you only get the keys if you are part of Windows and not just a temporary tenant.
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Other demos reinforced my belief that this isn’t your dad’s Windows 11.
When we dragged a photo from Outlook into the chat windows, Copilot asked what we wanted to do with it. We asked for instructions on how to make the unknown dish. It took a while (the Copilot preview isn’t always that quick) for him to identify it as Shashuka and then give detailed instructions on how to cook it.
Copilot further demonstrated the integration by working seamlessly with Windows Snip (which always sends clipped images to the clipboard). We clipped an image of a math problem and when we asked, Copilot of course helped us solve it.
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When we told Copilot we wanted to know how to focus on work, it used its platform integration to walk us through Windows 11’s Focus settings.
Copilot can also be used for the most mundane Windows tasks. Our demo desktop was starting to get a bit cluttered, so we asked Copilot to “freeze my windows.” It quickly organized the desktop and offered advice on how to make adjustments.
Windows Copilot Preview simply comes with the Windows 11 update. You don’t need to install anything and you don’t need to use it. But based on what I’ve seen, if you ignore Copilot, you could be missing out on a whole new way of working with the world’s most widely used desktop platform.