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Posts tagged "Copilot"

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Forget Microsoft Copilot – an unofficial Clippy AI is available for Windows 11
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Clippy is back – sort of – and ready to help you out on the Windows 11 desktop, if you dare to install a new app (still in beta).

Okay, so yes, this is an odd one, but you may recall Clippy (real name Clippit, but everybody uses the nickname now) from the heady days of Office 97, where the paperclip performed as a virtual assistant. In theory, it helped you to do stuff, but in practice, Clippy was generally an annoying presence. (“It looks like you’re writing a letter…” – well, we aren’t, Clippy, so go away).

The awfulness of Clippy has been mostly forgotten in the mists of time now, replaced by a nostalgic fondness for the assistant, and one enterprising developer has been inspired to resurrect Microsoft’s creation from the 90s.

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FireCube has made the Clippy app which is available from the Microsoft Store (and elsewhere, for free), software that puts a Clippy icon on your Windows 11 (or Windows 10) desktop, one powered by OpenAI’s GPT 3.5 model (as in ChatGPT).

You can pin this Clippy to the desktop and chat away to what is essentially ChatGPT in paperclip form. Note that this is still very early days for the application, so if you take the plunge, expect issues. Likely lots of them.

Analysis: A paperclip that needs some polish

To give you some perspective on where we’re at with this app, Clippy for the desktop was put on Github only a couple of days ago, with the developer FireCube observing that there are still issues with random crashes. So, stability is likely to be somewhat wonky for the time being, we’d imagine.

A further sticking point is that an OpenAI key is required to use this preview version of the Clippy app. If you haven’t paid for one of those, you won’t be able to fire up Clippy. As noted by the dev, this is one of the most pressing known issues for the application, and FireCube is working on a way around this that’ll hopefully be implemented soon enough.

Further work promised in the near future is the ability to drag and resize Clippy, and FireCube aims to bring more classic characters into the mix alongside the paperclip – like Microsoft Bob.

You may recall that Bob was an attempt to make the interface of Windows 95 (and Windows 3.1 before that) more user-friendly by turning it into a cutesy representation of a house. Like Clippy, Bob turned into something of a joke in the computing community, and was a concept swiftly abandoned by Microsoft.

This new take on Clippy for Windows 11 is clearly a tongue-in-cheek move ahead of the inbound Copilot AI which should go into testing in the relatively near future. (Microsoft promised this would happen in June, but that looks like a bust at this point). To say all eyes are on Copilot, and how it’ll be implemented, is an understatement (check out this recent leak for the latest gossip).

AI is very much the future of Windows 11, or rather, next-gen Windows – that and shifting to the cloud (and maybe a subscription model) – so we don’t expect Copilot will be consigned to the bin in short order, as was the fate of Clippy (and indeed Bob). That said, you never know…

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Windows 11 Copilot leak gives us a glimpse of the AI assistant in action
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We know Windows 11 is set to get Microsoft’s Copilot built in, and we’ve just caught a glimpse of the AI assistant feature (well, actually, a couple of sightings, and we’ll come back to the other one later).

In case you missed it (unlikely, admittedly), Copilot is the Bing Chat-powered integrated AI that pops up in a side panel to help in Windows 11, and Windows Latest managed to get a peek at an early version (add your own seasoning, and plenty of it, as with any leak).

There’s a big caveat here, namely that the pre-release version of Copilot shown (in a very brief clip) isn’t fully functional by any means.

Still, it gives you a flavor of how the Windows 11 helper – an assistant with a much, much grander vision than Cortana – will perform, and what it can do.

Windows 11 Copilot Pre-release Version

(Image credit: Windows Latest)

We see the user instructing Copilot to turn on Dark Mode (which, ahem, it fails to do – as noted, this isn’t a proper working version), and a response to a food-based question (the queries work in much the same way as with the Bing chatbot already, and the three core personalities for replies are in here, too).

We don’t see much here, and nothing of the really cool tricks that Copilot will eventually be able to do (such as turning on multiple features in one fell swoop to help with a certain aim like ‘being more productive’, or summarizing content to go in an email, right there in the app, in-line).

However, Windows Latest does observe that Microsoft will use in-house plug-ins to customize the Bing Chat experience in Windows 11, and that Copilot will utilize a system of “action cards” to detect how you are using the OS, and offer up intelligent suggestions based on that.

Analysis: Where art thou, Copilot?

Okay, so while this glimpse of Microsoft’s AI is still very much early work, and not very exciting, it’s a useful hint that Copilot is ticking along progress-wise. Because we’ve not heard anything from Microsoft since the initial announcement of the AI, when we were told that it’d be in testing in June.

Now, June is almost over, and it seems unlikely that a preview build is going to show up later this week with a functional Copilot doing its query answering and settings manipulating stuff.

That said, we’ve caught not only this sighting of Copilot from Windows Latest, but there was another one at the weekend. That was provided by regular Twitter-based leaker Albacore, who pointed out that recent Windows 11 preview builds in the Dev channel have a Windows Copilot button (hidden – and when enabled, it doesn’t do anything, mind).

That’s another hint that things are coming into place for Copilot’s release to be tested in preview. However, we’ve got a feeling this will take a lot of internal testing before it gets to Windows Insiders, somehow. As the blurb in the Copilot side panel observes, it’s AI-powered, and “surprises and mistakes are possible”.

When it comes to a Bing chatbot query, a mistake is embarrassing enough, but with an AI embedded right into the heart of Windows 11, Microsoft is going to need to take a lot more care to avoid any potential blunders – even in testing.

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Microsoft wants to help you build a website with Copilot AI
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Microsoft has added AI enhancements to its low-code website building offering, Power Pages.

Announced at its Microsoft Build conference, Copilot in Power Pages lets website developers leverage AI capabilities for copywriting and form building.

The new update to Microsoft  Power Pages tool looks  to speed up the time it takes website builders to generate text, build detailed forms and chatbots, using intelligent suggestions.

AI site building 

Available in public preview now, albeit in North America only, Copilot in Power Pages aims to cut down website development time with features such as auto-generated tables in Microsoft Dataverse to create corresponding forms.

Also available in public preview, the update also includes a virtual table and Power Automate integration in Power Pages that enables cloud flow from web page events.

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> Microsoft is bringing AI to Microsoft 365

> Microsoft Copilot lands on Viva

> Microsoft powers-up AI in free design app

Developers will be able to leverage these AI-enabled enhancements in Power Pages to jump-start their journey of ideation and building of impactful, secure external website-based services to better respond and serve their customers.

First revealed at Build 2022, Power Pages also includes the integration of Copilot chatbot activation that includes generative answers within the setup workspace.

“You also have the flexibility to adjust, add, or fine-tune fields using natural language input. It’s a more streamlined approach to form creation,” Sangya Singh, Vice President of Power Pages, noted in a blog post.

“For your website visitors, this feature enhances their interaction with your site, allowing them to ask natural language questions and receive concise responses complete with relevant links to optimize both administrative functionality and website engagement experiences.”

Microsoft is working on adding other AI capabilities including page creation, site theming, and image generation, which is predicted to be available in summer 2023.

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Microsoft’s AI gamble with Windows Copilot could be another Clippy
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At Microsoft’s Build 2023 event, the company unveiled its vision for the future of Windows 11: Windows Copilot, making it, as Microsoft claims, the “first PC platform to announce centralized AI assistance for customers.”

From what we know so far, it looks like Microsoft will further integrate its Bing Chat tool into Windows 11. Bing Chat is an artificial intelligence chatbot based on the popular ChatGPT, and Microsoft’s use of it in its Bing search engine has been praised for offering a user-friendly way of using artificial intelligence.

It got people interested in Bing, something Microsoft has struggled to do in the past, so it’s not too surprising that the company is doubling down and further integrating Bing Chat into Windows 11.

According to Microsoft, Windows Copilot will give you a new way to use and configure Windows – so you can ask it to open up a particular app or setting, and you can do this by chatting to Bing Chat as you would a human using a messaging app.

Let’s be honest: the current implementation of search in Windows 11 isn’t great, so anything that improves it is fine by us.

Screenshot of Windows Copilot in use

(Image credit: Microsoft)

Aways there

In other words, it looks like Windows Copilot can detect what apps you’re using and how you’re using them, and offer you advice and information based on that.

That sounds a little creepy, but it could have its uses – for example, if you’re writing up an essay on a subject, Windows Copilot can give you facts and information to help you. Of course, as we’ve seen in the past, AI chatbots like Bing Chat aren’t infallible and can offer wrong information, so always double-check.

Windows Copilot can also be docked to the side of the screen so it can, according to Microsoft, “provide assistance no matter what [a user is] doing – getting inspired, planning, communicating, creating.”

If Microsoft wants us to keep it pinned to the side of our screens, it’ll need to make sure Windows Copilot is genuinely useful and doesn’t get in the way of what you’re doing. We don’t want another Clippy situation, after all.

Clippy was an assistant that Microsoft added to its Office suite of programs. It was supposed to intelligently determine what you were working on, and offer help and inspiration – which sounds a lot like Windows Copilot.

The only problem was, Clippy quickly became disliked by many people, as it would often interrupt while you were working on something – and, even worse, it often gave you suggestions that had nothing to do with what you were doing.

To avoid Windows Copilot turning into another Clippy, Microsoft needs to ensure that it doesn't become too intrusive. That means it shouldn't show pop-ups or take over the screen.

It also needs to be useful – so if it is watching what you're doing, it needs to give context-appropriate help and suggestions. Microsoft has a lot riding on this, so I hope it gets it right.

Microsoft will begin rolling out Windows Copilot in June to people signed up to test out new Windows features.

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