Windows Copilot turns Bing Chat into a promising virtual assistant powered by AI

What Microsoft was working on with Bing Chat has evolved into something much more – Windows Copilot. Copilot is an AI-powered virtual assistant, much like Google Assistant on the Pixel, except with LLM knowledge.

Microsoft started introducing modern AI with Bing Chat, which has proven to be a successful attempt at a conversational AI chatbot. In competition with Bard and ChatGPT, Bing Chat has proven its worth as an option in the intensely fast-growing landscape of AI models. Now, Microsoft wants to take it further.

In a press release posted by Microsoft, the public version of Windows is getting a new AI assistant called “Copilot.” Copilot has been available in preview for quite some time now, though it may have gone unnoticed by many users as just another button on the taskbar. In reality, Copilot is a fully functional virtual assistant aimed at aiding whatever project you’re working on.

Think of it like the Windows version of Google Assistant if the Search Generative Experience powered it. It uses the same model as Bing Chat, which means you can do all the same things you can with the AI chatbot as you did before. Answers to queries will appear in the sidebar that homes it, and sources will open in Edge.

Copilot can also change settings for you, like switching on Dark mode or changing the volume, or it can take images and remove the background through the power of the Paint app. Your existing apps are all contextually available to the AI model, meaning you could enter prompts like “Play a focus playlist on Spotify,” and it’ll do exactly that.

For users who use Windows’ suite of apps like Paint, Clipchamp, and Photos, Copilot will likely prove extremely useful. Even with it expanding into third-party apps, there’s a huge amount of room for it to operate within Windows. The roadblock here for many may end up being its ability to operate within third-party apps installed from downloaded .exe files, as they don’t come directly from the Microsoft Store.

Nevertheless, the feature looks promising. Copilot will start rolling out to users in the public build of Windows starting on September 26. With that update, a plethora of other apps will see improvements as well, including an all-new Paint app, Photos, Snipping Tool, and File Explorer with a modernized look and feel.