Microsoft Builds Its Copilot AI Assistant Straight Into Windows 11 – CNET [CNET]

A task bar icon shaped like a loop of blue ribbon opens up an entirely new way to control your PC and make it useful.

A task bar icon shaped like a loop of blue ribbon opens up an entirely new artificial intelligence interface to control your PC and make it useful.

Microsoft has begun building an AI chat interface straight into its single most important software product, the company said Tuesday. The tool will perform tasks like summarizing documents, suggesting music, offering tech support for your PC and answering questions you might ask a search engine or AI chatbot.

Windows Copilot is scheduled to arrive in a preview version of Windows in June via an icon in the task bar that looks like a loop of blue ribbon. Clicking it opens a chat interface sidebar where you can type questions or prompts like “enable dark mode” and click buttons to take actions.

It’s a major new step in Microsoft’s embrace of artificial intelligence technology. Previously the company had built AI into its Bing search engine and Edge web browser, but Windows is used by millions more people and for many more hours a day.

“We are bringing the Copilot to the biggest canvas of all, Windows,” CEO Satya Nadella said at the company’s Microsoft Build developer conference.

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And the change reflects a growing seriousness in modern AI. Google has begun building AI directly into its most important services, like search, Gmail and Docs. Adobe on Tuesday released a beta version of Photoshop that uses AI to generate new imagery. AI remains experimental, but no longer is AI on the periphery of the world’s biggest tech products.

Microsoft also is building its Copilot technology into its Office suite of productivity tools.

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Microsoft added AI-boosted search results and an AI chatbot to its Bing search engine in February. It relies on OpenAI, an artificial intelligence powerhouse in which Microsoft has invested, for the core language processing technology.

Also at Build, Microsoft announced it’s making plugin technology available to Bing and Windows Copilot so developers can integrate their own software. That’ll let you tap into those apps using Microsoft’s AI interfaces.

And Microsoft announced that OpenAI is using Bing search engine data to help improve its ChatGPT chatbot. Search engines can be used to “ground” generative AI tools that can often make up incorrect information.