Microsoft Upgrades Copilot with New Features
Microsoft Teaches Copilot New Tricks for Its 50th Birthday
For its 50th birthday, Microsoft is upgrading its AI-powered Copilot chatbot with new features. Copilot can now take action on "most websites," enabling it to book tickets, reserve restaurants, and more. This upgrade allows Copilot to remember specific things about you, similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, like your favorite food and films. Additionally, it can analyze real-time video from your phone, answering questions in the context of what it "sees."
Improved Capabilities
The upgrades come as Microsoft is reportedly mulling a revamp of Copilot, which has historically been powered by AI models from OpenAI, with more of its own in-house technology. Copilot has often lagged behind rivals ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, which in recent months have only ramped up the pace of feature rollouts.
New Features
- Copilot can now complete tasks on the web along the lines of how "agentic" tools like OpenAI’s Operator do it. Microsoft says it partnered with 1-800-Flowers.com, Booking.com, Expedia, Kayak, OpenTable, Priceline, Tripadvisor, Skyscanner, Viator, and Vrbo for day-one compatibility.
- Copilot can track online deals for you. Tell the bot to look for price drops and sales on an item, and it’ll notify you when they happen — and present you with a link to buy.
- Copilot can generate "podcasts" akin to the Audio Overviews in Google’s NotebookLM. Given a website, study, or some other source, Copilot will create a back-and-forth dialogue between two synthetic hosts.
- On Android and iOS, Copilot can now see what’s within view of your phone’s camera or in your photo gallery, and answer questions about it (e.g., "What’s this weird flower?").
- On Windows, the revamped Copilot app can view what’s on your desktop’s screen to search, change settings, organize files, and more.
- Copilot has a new project-consolidating Pages function that draws heavy inspiration from ChatGPT Canvas and Anthropic’s Claude Artifacts tool. Pages puts notes and research into a canvas that Copilot can help organize and turn into a document.
- Copilot’s new Deep Research feature finds, analyzes, and combines information from online sources, documents, and images to answer more complex queries, much like ChatGPT deep research and Gemini’s Deep Research.
- Copilot can now remember more about you. Microsoft says the bot will note your preferences as you interact with it, offering "tailored solutions," "proactive suggestions," and reminders.
Safety and Control
If the prospect of a chatbot remembering intimate details about your past conversations bothers you, there’s a way to delete individual "memories" or opt out entirely, Microsoft notes.
"Copilot [gives] you control through the user dashboard and the option to choose which types of information it remembers about you or to opt out entirely," Microsoft wrote in a blog post provided to TechCrunch. "You remain in control."
Conclusion
The upgrades to Copilot demonstrate Microsoft’s commitment to improving its chatbot and making it more capable and user-friendly. With its new features, Copilot is poised to compete with other popular chatbots like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini.
FAQs
- Q: What is Copilot?
A: Copilot is an AI-powered chatbot developed by Microsoft. - Q: What are the new features of Copilot?
A: Copilot can now take action on most websites, remember specific things about you, analyze real-time video from your phone, generate podcasts, and more. - Q: Can Copilot track online deals for me?
A: Yes, Copilot can track online deals for you, notifying you when prices drop or sales occur. - Q: How can I control what information Copilot remembers about me?
A: You can delete individual "memories" or opt out entirely through the user dashboard.
