Microsoft has been all about AI for the past few months, and it was only a matter of time until Windows became one of the big pillars for it. Today, Microsoft introduced Windows Copilot, bringing powerful AI capabilities directly to Windows 11, and making it easier than ever for users to leverage the power of artificial intelligence. This also makes Windows 11 the first PC operating system to introduce a centralized AI assistance platform.

Windows Copilot will be front and center on Windows 11, with a button available right on the taskbar so you can access it at a moment's notice. This may be why the initial Bing Chat integration seemed lackluster, since the company was gearing up to fully embrace AI through Copilot instead.

It will also be available through the Windows Copilot sidebar, which gives you access to the features you need while you use all of your other apps, integrating more seamlessly with your workflow. Windows Copilot lets you do everything you already do on Windows, like changing settings and using features like Snap Assist or Focus, with the added benefit of large language models to do things like rewrite text with a different tone by simply copying it to the clipboard. Of course, it can also do things like answer any questions you have, just as Bing would.

What is Copilot?

Screen showing Bing Chat recommending a restaurant

Copilot is the branding Microsoft has been using for assistive AI features across its portfolio of products. They can be almost any kind of AI-based tool that leveraged large language models (LLM) to provide help with the work you're doing. The idea is that AI isn't in control, it's just there to help you, while the user remains in control of when they need AI to help them and what they need it to do, hence the term "copilot".

It's been implemented in a few Microsoft products already in different capacities, but the example you've probably heard of is Bing Chat, which lets you ask questions and perform all kinds of queries using natural language. Using large language models, specifically OpenAI's GPT-4, Copilot can interpret your requests in the way a person would, and take the appropriate action or provide the requested information as needed.

Windows Copilot is built on top of Bing Chat. And just like Bing, which recently had support announced for first- and third-party plug-ins, Windows Copilot will support them, too. In fact, both Bing and ChatGPT plug-ins can be leveraged in Windows Copilot, and Microsoft encourages developers to keep investing in these plug-ins so that they can easily be brought to Windows Copilot when it becomes available.

An image showcasing logos for various companies developing plugins for Bing Chat and ChatGPT
Source: Microsoft

What other Microsoft services have Copilot?

Microsoft has been using the term "Copilot" for a few years now. It started with GirHub Copilot, an AI assistant specifically meant for coding. GitHub Copilot can take your exisiting code and suggest lines or entire functions to add based on the context of what you're coding.

Starting earlier this year, Microsoft began using the term "copilot" for more of its products, starting with Bing Chat and its integration with the Edge browser, which Microsoft calls "your copilot for the web". In Edge, you can not only use Bing chat through the sidebar, but you can also ask Bing to write up a social media post about a topic of your choosing with the tone you want. It can also write emails, summarize page information, and more.

Images of Microsoft 365 Copilot features across various apps, including Teams and Excel

More recently, there was Microsoft 365 Copilot, arguably the most comprehensive set of AI capabilities Microsoft has introduced for one of its products. Microsoft 365 Copilot encompasses all of the tools in the Microsoft 365 suite, offering capabilities that are relevant to each of the apps.

There are even more specific use cases, like Dynamics 365 Copilot and Copilot for Power Platform. Introduced today, there's also Copilot in Microsoft Fabric, a platform that was also announced today. Microsoft Fabric is a unified data analytics platform, and it's built for the era of AI, so it makes sense to see Copilot built into it as well so users can create dataflows and pipelines using natural language.

What does Copilot mean for you?

While we can't try Windows Copiot for ourselves, we already have a pretty good idea of what it's capable of from other implementations. Of course, in Bing, it can search the internet for answers to your questions or create lists of places to visit on a trip, and with plugins such as OpenTable, it can recommend restaurants. At the very least, Windows Copilot will allow you to do these things by accessing Bing directly.

For Microsoft 365 Copilot, these capabilities span the entire suite of apps. In Word, you can ask Copilot to expand on a short draft to write a full text based on the existing content. In Excel, Copilot can generate graphs to help you visualize table data, or even see what might happen if a specific variable was changed, potentially helping users get directions in the decisions they make. This kind of functionality extends as far as Microsoft Teams, where Copilot can summarize meetings, and it's something Google is also investing in with recent announcements for Google Workspace.

The aforementioned plugins are a key component Microsoft is highlighting. Bing Chat uses the same open plugin platform as OpenAI's ChatGPT, so developers can build for both platforms at the same time, and you'll be able to take advantage of that through Windows Copilot. Businesses and developers can also create their own plugins for Microsoft 365 to bring the power of AI to their own data, opening the doors to more actions that can be taken more efficiently and with less effort.

A preview of Windows Copilot will be available for Windows Insiders in June, but again, Microsoft hasn't provided much in the way of detail as to how it will work. Presumably, the company will show it in action during its time at Build.