Copilot has received some nice upgrades. Photo: Microsoft.
Microsoft has unveiled several changes to Copilot to deliver one “with a more intuitive design with more digestible, speedy and fluent answers”, as Microsoft put it.
In a blog post, Microsoft said that the new Copilot can react to users with a “warm tone and a distinct style, providing not only information but encouragement, feedback and advice”.
With this in mind, Copilot is getting new capabilities like Voice and Vision that make it more useful and more natural to interact with. The upgrades (in the order of what we felt was important) include:
- Copilot Voice: Connect with your AI companion using Copilot Voice. This is the most intuitive and natural way to ask a quick question or even just vent at the end of a tough day. Your companion will be personal to you, with four voice options to choose from. Copilot Voice will initially launch in English in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States with a rollout to more regions and languages soon.
- Copilot Vision: Copilot Vision sees what you see and can talk to you about it in real time. For example, it understands the web page you’re viewing, can interpret both text and images and answer questions about its content, suggest next steps, all without disrupting your workflow. Imagine you’re trying to furnish a new apartment, Copilot Vision can help you search for furniture, find the right colour palette, think through your options on everything from rugs to throws and even suggest ways of arranging what you’re looking at. Copilot Vision is rolling out to Copilot Labs soon and will be available to a limited number of Copilot Pro subscribers in the United States.
- Copilot in Microsoft Edge: Copilot has been built right into your Microsoft Edge browser, quickly helping answer questions, summarise page content, translate text or rewrite a sentence. Now it’s even easier to access Copilot directly from the Microsoft Edge browser by simply typing @copilot into the address bar. It could also help the popularity of Microsoft’s Edge browser which had a 5.24% market share as of August 2024 according to Statcounter.
- Think Deeper: This new feature in Copilot lets the assistant “think” its way through complex questions, allowing it to take more time to respond, and letting it give step-by-step answers. It’s designed to work best when you’re trying to compare two options side by side, like, for example, “Should I move to this city or that?” or “What type of car best suits my needs?”
- Copilot Daily: Copilot Daily helps you kick off your morning with a summary of news and weather, all read to you in your favourite Copilot Voice. It will also give reminders of what’s coming soon. Microsoft says it is working with partners such as Reuters, Axel Springer, Hearst Magazines, USA TODAY Network, and the Financial Times to ensure that Copilot Daily will only pull content from authorised content sources with plans to add more sources over time. Copilot Daily has started in the United States and the United Kingdom with more countries coming soon.
- Personalised Discover: Copilot Discover helps you get going, offering both a handy guide to its useful features and conversation starters, making jumping in simpler than ever. With your permission, these jumping-off points are customised based on your interactions with other Microsoft services and will be further personalised over time according to your conversation history.
- Copilot Labs: Copilot Labs gives people the opportunity to test out our experimental features that are still in development.
As always, security and privacy were stressed by Microsoft, with the company saying that Copilot Vision sessions are entirely opt-in and ephemeral, meaning that none of the content Copilot Vision engages with is stored or used for training, the moment you end your session, data is permanently discarded.
The refreshed Copilot is rolling out on iOS and Android and in Windows as well.
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.