#copilot

#copilot

This is the question that Microsoft set out to answer in a recent study, which analyzed 37.5 million anonymized user conversations with Copilot, the company's flagship AI chatbot. The results, published on Wednesday, reveal that people's use of AI fluctuates widely depending on the time (it looked at time across the days, months, and year), with stark differences in the types of questions being asked on desktop versus mobile; most notably, users of the latter are asking for more personal advice.

Microsoft Corp., eager to boost downloads of its Copilot chatbot, has recruited some of the most popular influencers in America to push a message to young consumers that might be summed up as: Our AI assistant is as cool as ChatGPT. Microsoft could use the help. The company recently said its family of Copilot assistants attracts 150 million active users each month. But OpenAI's ChatGPT claims 800 million weekly active users, and Google's Gemini boasts 650 million a month.

Instead of bolting AI onto legacy experiences, we have the chance to reimagine Outlook from the ground up,

Turns out that the company isn't done trying to reformulate and revive ideas it has already tried before. As part of a push toward what it calls "human-centered AI," Microsoft is now putting a face on Copilot. Literally, a face: "Mico" is an "expressive, customizable, and warm" blob with a face that dynamically "listens, reacts, and even changes colors to reflect your interactions" as you interact with Copilot. (Another important adjective for Mico: "optional.")

Microsoft has officially ended support for Windows 10, all but forcing users to either upgrade or pay more money to keep getting essential security updates for the OS they already own. No matter that its replacement, Windows 11, can't be run on nearly half a billion machines, meaning it'll create mountains of e-waste as those old, perfectly usable PCs get thrown out for new ones.

In an X post on Monday, Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of the company's AI division, announced that those individual memory preferences will, in turn, shape the chatbot's future responses. For example, you can now ask Copilot to remember that you're vegetarian, so that it takes that dietary restriction into account when responding to your later requests for local restaurant recommendations.

During a fireside chat at LinkedIn's San Francisco office on Tuesday, Ryan Roslansky said using AI is like "having a second brain" that knows him "extremely well." It's why AI is helpful almost every time he sends important emails to his boss, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. "A lot of the time when I'm sending a super high-stakes email to Satya Nadella or other CEOs or world leaders or etcetera, you've got to make sure you sound super smart when you do that," Roslansky said.

On Thursday, Microsoft announced four new Copilot skills accessible from File Explorer. By right-clicking on any supported file stored in OneDrive, you can ask Copilot to summarize it, answer questions about it, and create an FAQ. And by selecting as many as five files, you can tell the AI to compare them all. To tap into the new skills, you'll need a Microsoft 365 Family or Personal subscription. The files you wish to analyze must be stored in OneDrive and appear in File Explorer.

To date, Microsoft's efforts to drive AI features into Windows have been largely limited to laptops carrying the Copilot+ branding. Now, MSI has decided that anyone wanting a desktop mini PC should be able to access the same AI tricks and toys like Recall, Studio Effects, Live Captions, Paint Cocreator, and Click to Do. Now, this is no place to debate the benefits