At an event in New York, Microsoft announced the launch of Microsoft Copilot, an artificial intelligence (AI) companion designed to change how people interact with technology and enhance productivity. It will be freely available in Windows 11, Microsoft 365, Edge and Bing as an app, or can reveal itself when you need it with a right click.
“We are entering a new era of AI, one that is fundamentally changing how we relate to and benefit from technology. With the convergence of chat interfaces and large-language models, you can now ask for what you want in natural language, and the technology is smart enough to answer, create, or take action. At Microsoft, we think about this as having a copilot to help navigate any task,” said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president and consumer chief marketing officer.
Copilot will incorporate the context and intelligence of the web, work data and what a user is doing at the moment on their PC to provide better assistance, with their privacy and security at the forefront. Microsoft will start its rollout in its early form in the next release of Windows 11 starting September 26.
Microsoft 365 Copilot for Enterprise will be generally available for enterprise customers from November 1, 2023, along with Microsoft 365 Chat, a new AI assistant. Designer will be integrated with Microsoft 365 Copilot for personal users, starting with Word. Designer helps users transform a text-heavy document with custom graphics and create stunning visuals, social media posts, invitations and more using cutting-edge AI.
The Windows 11 update has over 200 new features to empower users to complete tasks with ease and lessen their cognitive load, making once complicated tasks simple. This includes Copilot integration, new Outlook for Windows, new capabilities in Paint and Photos enhanced with AI, improved Clipchamp, Notepad, modernised File Explorer, and new natural voices in Narrator to enhance accessibility and productivity.
The new features in Bing and Edge include personalised answers generated based on the chat history, an improved DALL.E 3 model from OpenAI in Bing Image Creator, and new Content Credentials. These use cryptographic methods to add an invisible digital watermark to all AI-generated images in Bing, including the time and date it was originally created.
Copilot in Microsoft Shopping will provide more tailored recommendations on Bing and Edge with the best price based on requests powered by AI. Soon, users can also use a photo or saved image as the starting point for shopping.
Over 160 million Microsoft 365 users already have access to Bing Chat Enterprise at no additional cost, and Bing Chat Enterprise is now available on the Microsoft Edge mobile app. Multimodal visual search and Image Creator will also be added to boost creativity at work.
New Surface devices being launched with the latest AI innovations for people and businesses include the Laptop Studio 2, Laptop Go 3, Surface Go 4 for Business and Surface Hub 3. 3D printable Adaptive Pen Grips for Surface Pen have been added to the company’s lineup of adaptive accessories.
