The AI Economy: Microsoft's Copilot Becomes an AI for Everyone

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IN THIS ISSUE: Microsoft supercharges its Copilot assistant with new capabilities to help it become a companion for all. Is it the bot we’ve been waiting for? Plus, the head of open-source AI proponent Ai2 reacts to OpenAI possibly joining the open-source community.

The Prompt

Microsoft is ushering in a new era for its Copilot AI assistant with a wave of upgrades designed to make it more personal, proactive, and powerful. For 50 years, the company has been guided by co-founder Bill Gates’ ambition to put a PC on every desk and in every home. Now, it’s driven by more modern desires: to make AI work for everyone. Microsoft wants to transform Copilot into the Jarvis we know from “Iron Man” and hopefully become the AI companion we want, made just for us.

To bring this vision to life, Microsoft has equipped Copilot with an array of new features designed to make it more responsive and helpful. From memory recall and personalization that allows the AI assistant to understand better and remember your preferences to the ability to complete tasks on your behalf, analyze your surroundings through your camera, and keep your life organized—Copilot is becoming increasingly intuitive. It can now also generate podcasts tailored to your interests, help you shop smarter, conduct deep research, and quickly find answers to your most pressing questions.

“The important point is that throughout Copilot is more than an AI; it’s yours,” Mustafa Suleyman, the head of Microsoft AI, wrote in a blog post. “It remembers not just what you said but who you are. Copilot helps you stay organized, think clearly, [and] learn more intuitively. It’s there when you need a quick factual answer, a long exploratory debate, or when you fancy just downloading after a hard day.”

What Copilot Can Now Remember About You

We start with Memory. Unsurprisingly, this feature enables Copilot to remember important details, including your favorite food, what films you enjoy watching, the birthdays of your relatives and loved ones, and their interests. And it’ll learn the more you interact with the assistant, building a richer profile and offering customized solutions, proactive suggestions, and reminders.

While Microsoft isn’t the first to introduce Memory, following in the footsteps of its AI partner OpenAI, Meta, and Google, it may have an edge in accessibility. Unlike some competitors, which require users to pay for similar features, Microsoft has yet to announce pricing for these new Copilot updates. This absence of a fee suggests that these capabilities could be free to use, giving Microsoft a competitive advantage.

You’ll also be able to customize Copilot’s appearance, redefining how you interact with this virtual assistant. Microsoft was light on details but acknowledged that it was experimenting with “new ways” for people to experience it.

Microsoft’s Copilot can now undertake actions to complete tasks behind the scenes. Image credit: Microsoft

We’ve heard about AI agents taking action for those in the workplace, and to an extent, AIs like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa have also helped us out in our daily lives. Microsoft is adding actions to Copilot so this bot can complete assigned tasks behind the scenes. Want to book a dinner reservation or send a gift to a friend? Copilot will do that using a single chat prompt. Microsoft has added integrations with a few partners, including 1-800-Flowers.com, Booking.com, Expedia, Kayak, OpenTable, Priceline, Tripadvisor, Skyscanner, Viator, and Vrbo.

Helping Us See the World

Last year, Microsoft introduced Copilot Vision, an AI-powered way to read webpages in Microsoft’s Edge browser. Today, that capability is moving beyond the web to mobile and Windows. With it, Copilot can leverage your phone’s camera to generate an interactive experience (mixed reality?) with the world. Scanning your camera allows you to request information, guidance, or ideas. It appears to be similar compared to Google Lens or what’s offered with Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses. Microsoft said Copilot Vision can do the same with the videos and photos stored on your camera roll.

Microsoft Copilot now supports Vision on Windows, enabling it to see what’s on your desktop and help you complete your work. Image credit: Microsoft

Copilot Vision will also work on the native Windows app, meaning the assistant can read what’s on your screen and interact with the content. Ask Copilot to search for information, change the settings of your screen, organize files, collaborate on projects, and more. The native Copilot app on Windows is available now, but Copilot Vision will only be accessible to Windows Insiders first starting next week.

Organizing Our Lives

The remaining features aim to bring order to our chaotic lives. They start with Copilot Pages, which appears to be an AI-powered version of OneNote. It compiles all your notes, content, research, and information scattered across your device and places them on a canvas. Then, Copilot organizes it all to help you move on with your day. This feature is similar to the ones offered by OpenAI, Perplexity, and Anthropic.

Microsoft Copilot can now create podcasts around your favorite topics or a selection of websites that you feed it. Image credit: Microsoft

Microsoft’s Copilot is also getting into podcasting…sort of. The AI assistant will now generate shows specifically for you. It’ll create personalized episodes based on your interests—whether you’re exploring vacation destinations or want a deeper dive into a particular topic. Alternatively, you can provide Copilot with a list of websites and have it create a podcast based on them. Personally, I think I could have Copilot generate a show around the articles I’m curating in one of my Flipboard Magazines. Nevertheless, this feature closely mirrors the Audio Overviews feature within Google’s NotebookLM, which can now recommend websites through its “Discover Sources” option.

In addition to these features, Copilot can also serve as your personal shopper, assisting with research and monitoring prices. It can also be your research assistant if you want to explore a topic more thoroughly, which Microsoft made available for its M365 Copilot last month, and Google and OpenAI have already released it for their respective chatbots. Lastly, Microsoft is integrating Copilot Search in Bing into its assistant. The company touts it’ll offer traditional and AI-generated search, something it first introduced in 2023.

Maintaining Control and Showcasing Value

Microsoft asserts you’ll always have control over your data and the AI experience. “You are the pilot, and you make the calls and set the boundaries,” Suleyman stated. With these new features leveraging more personal data to assist you, it’s crucial to ensure transparency and reassure users that their information remains private and secure while enhancing their AI experience.

That being said, while many of these features have already been introduced by other companies, their integration into Copilot elevates the assistant beyond what we traditionally expect from an early chatbot. It’s essential to recognize that Copilot isn’t just Cortana 2.0; it’s capable of much more. To maintain its AI leadership over rivals like Amazon and Apple—which have launched next-generation versions of Alexa and Siri—Microsoft must ensure that Copilot continues delivering real value to users. This will be key to staying ahead in the rapidly evolving AI landscape.

Featured Image: Copilot signage on display at Microsoft's Redmond, Washington offices on May 20, 2024. Photo credit: Ken Yeung

Quote This

“We love it. We celebrated this as a great moment. I think, maybe, they’re realizing the value of the open, and we hope to see a lot of good initiatives from everybody to contribute back to the open. We truly believe AI will move forward faster and safer if everybody opens up what they’re doing.”

— Ai2 Chief Executive Ali Farhadi responds to OpenAI’s announcement that it will release an “open” AI language model “in the coming months.” However, skepticism remains over whether OpenAI will truly open its data or just share the model’s weights.

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This Week’s AI News

💥 Disruption, Misinformation, and Risks

🔎 Opinions, Analysis, and Editorials

Agentic AI won’t make public cloud providers rich (InfoWorld)
Looking to replace your intranet with AI? (VKTR)

🎧 Podcasts

Inside Amazon’s attempt to reinvent Alexa for the new era of AI (GeekWire)

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