Microsoft announces AI Copilot for Windows coming Sept. 26

Microsoft has been an early leader in generative AI thanks to its investment in — and integrations with — OpenAI and the latter’s hit conversational large language model (LLM) app ChatGPT.

But now, Redmond is going even further: today at an event in New York City, Microsoft speakers announced that a new version of Windows 11 will be shipping on September 26, 2023, and with it will be Microsoft’s AI companion Copilot baked right into the operating system (OS) itself.

“Because of the way it is built into Windows, Copilot has a view across all your applications,” said Carmen Zlateff, vice president of Windows, during the event. “What if Copilot could take copy and paste and make them even better — copy, paste and do?”

The company showed off demo screens of the new Copilot for Windows that resembled its current Bing Chat application interface, with a right-side rail that allows the user to converse with Copilot and select different options including “more creative,” “more balanced,” or “more precise” responses, which essentially allows the user to turn up or down how imaginative (and hallucinatory) the AI model becomes — analogous to “temperature” settings.

Microsoft announced in May that Copilot would be available through all Microsoft 365 applications, part of Microsoft’s longstanding software-as-a-subscription (SaaS) offering, but the new announcement appears to offer Copilot to those who just have Windows 11 installed locally, and to represent a deeper integration of the AI tool into the OS itself.

This is a developing story and will be updated with new facts and information. Check back in a few minutes…