Microsoft celebrates its 50th anniversary by letting Copilot see what you see

Microsoft Copilot bar on a nature scene.
(Image credit: Microsoft)

During a 50th anniversary event at its Redmond, Washington headquarters, Microsoft executive vice president and CEO of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, detailed new features for Copilot to make it a true companion on Windows and smartphone platforms.

Many of these features have appeared in other AI programs, but others, like Vision, may help change the way you use your computer, should they become widely adopted.

Copilot Vision and Actions

Deep Research and Search

Microsoft is also adding a Deep Research functionality that analyzes multiple sources and combines information from across the web or documents. We've seen this in ChatGPT and DeepSeek, and now it's coming to Copilot.

Copilot is also powering search (which ChatGPT is also doing), grabbing information from multiple sites in Bing in order to come up with a broad report with multiple citations.

"This allows you to be just a click away from your favorite publishers and content owners," Microsoft's Bing blog reads.

Memories

Copilot will be able to learn about you. As you interact with the AI, it will remember details you tell it, which Microsoft says will make responses richer and allow for proactive action.

If you don't want Copilot to get to know you that well, you can opt out entirely or limit what it remembers through a user dashboard.

Podcasts, Pages, and Shopping

Copilot's other new features are varied and, frankly, less interesting. There's an option to have Copilot create a podcast based on your interests. If you really want to learn about art or horticulture while doing the dishes, all you have to do is ask Copilot for a podcast about it.

The Copliot Shopping feature researches products and informs you about price drops (the latter of which has been done manually by sites like camelcamelcamel.com for years). But Copilot will also let you make purchases directly through the phone app, seemingly bypassing the store altogether by using the AI in an agentic way.

Pages is effectively an organizer. You can hand Copilot a ton of documents, notes, or other files, and have Copilot put them together into a clean outline for brainstorming, studying, or journaling.

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Andrew E. Freedman

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and BlueSky @andrewfreedman.net. You can send him tips on Signal: andrewfreedman.01

  • Thunder64
    Also known as "features" nobody asked for!
    Reply
  • Rabohinf
    A restraining order may be called for here.
    Reply
  • Geef
    Co-Pilot will quickly find out what the internet was created for... :peach::eggplant: :eek:

    I wonder if it will start giving suggestions for clicks while people are on certain hub websites?
    Reply
  • Findecanor
    Giving Microsoft's AI access to my webcam? Hell no!
    Reply
  • salgado18
    I actually like many of those features. I just don't trust Microsoft enough to get even near this. Wish there was something like it for Linux, but it will probably take years to reach the same level of convenience.
    Reply
  • heffeque
    I'm assuming that I will end up downgrading from W10 to W11 at some point, whenever it's unsafe to still be on W10.

    But if W11 ever doesn't allow me to uninstall Copilot (currently it's easy with the proper tools), I'll certainly move everything to Bazzite.
    Reply
  • Phaaze88
    Hello, officer?
    This... AI? ... right here.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    heffeque said:
    I'm assuming that I will end up downgrading from W10 to W11 at some point, whenever it's unsafe to still be on W10.

    But if W11 ever doesn't allow me to uninstall Copilot (currently it's easy with the proper tools), I'll certainly move everything to Bazzite.
    Currently, it is trivially easy to Uninstall.
    What that actually does, or how long this will last is unknown.
    Reply