Microsoft unveils new Copilot AI assistant for Windows

Microsoft has unveiled a new AI-powered assistant for its Windows PCs that is able to help users with any computing task.

Called Copilot, the new assistant can be called upon at any point to generate text, find music to help a user focus, organise different windows on screen or help with creative tasks around photos or video, the tech firm said.

Microsoft said the new app was a way of building on the various AI tools it already had in place across different apps to now “unify these capabilities into a single experience”.

The tech giant is already using OpenAI’s ChatGPT within its Bing search engine.

The company said Copilot would begin to roll out as part of a free update to Windows 11, starting on September 26.

“We are entering a new era of AI, one that is fundamentally changing how we relate to and benefit from technology,” Microsoft consumer chief marketing officer Yusuf Mehdi said.

“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 it or take action.

“At Microsoft, we think about this as having a co-pilot to help navigate any task.

“We have been building AI-powered co-pilots into our most-used and loved products – making coding more efficient with GitHub, transforming productivity at work with Microsoft 365, redefining search with Bing and Edge and delivering contextual value that works across your apps and PC with Windows.

“Today we take the next step to unify these capabilities into a single experience we call Microsoft Copilot, your everyday AI companion.

“Copilot will uniquely incorporate the context and intelligence of the web, your work data and what you are doing in the moment on your PC to provide better assistance – with your privacy and security at the forefront.

“It will be a simple and seamless experience, available in Windows 11, Microsoft 365, and in our web browser with Edge and Bing.

“It will work as an app or reveal itself when you need it with a right click. We will continue to add capabilities and connections to Copilot across to our most-used applications over time in service of our vision to have one experience that works across your whole life.”

Microsoft’s announcement comes a day after Amazon unveiled a major update to its voice-based AI assistant Alexa, revealing it will soon be able to converse more naturally and better understand context and inference.

During its live event, Microsoft also unveiled two new laptops – the Surface Laptop Studio 2 and Surface Laptop Go 3, as well as a new Surface Go 4 tablet.