Microsoft Copilot is Getting New Memory and Personalization Features to Make it “Truly Yours”

Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary today with big updates for the consumer version of its Copilot assistant. Back in October, Microsoft redesigned its Copilot chatbot to transform it into an “AI companion,” and today the company is doubling down on this vision to turn Copilot into a truly personalized assistant.

“Today, we are embarking on the journey to take Copilot from an AI companion to your AI companion,” wrote Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI. With your permission, Copilot will now remember what you talk about, so it learns your likes and dislikes and details about your life: the name of your dog, that tricky project at work, what keeps you motivated to stick to your new workout routine.”

The leader of Microsoft’s new AI subsidiary explained how Copilot will become “yours” by understanding the most important details about your daily routine, making proactive suggestions, and interacting with you with an “engaging personality throughout the day. “This is far richer, more dynamic, supportive and emergent than any software we’ve seen before,” Suleyman emphasized. “It’s a new kind of relationship with technology, a new era.”

To turn the consumer version of Copilot into your AI companion, what started as a ChatGPT-like chatbot will get new agentic capabilities on the web. The Copilot apps for Windows and mobile are also adding support for Copilot Vision, which will let the assistant see and analyze what’s around you as well as what’s on your screen. Moreover, Microsoft detailed today how Copilot will be able to generate podcasts tailored to your interests.

Not everything that Microsoft announced today is exactly new, but here are the main changes coming to the Copilot consumer experience:

Copilot Search in Bing: Microsoft will combine traditional search results in Bing with generative AI answers, similar to what Google is doing by adding AI overviews to its search results.

Copilot Actions on the web: New agentic “capabilities” will let Copilot perform various tasks on the Internet, such as booking tickets, dinner reservations, and hotel rooms, making other types of purchases, and more. Microsoft’s launch partners for these Copilot Actions include 1-800-Flowers, Booking, Expedia, Kayak, OpenTable, Priceline, Tripadvisor, Skyscanner, Viator, and Vrbo. In addition to these agentic capabilities, Copilot can also work as a shopping assistant, offering product comparisons and information about price drops and sales.

Memory and personalization: Users will be able to opt in to let Copilot remember their preferences and build their user profiles so that the AI assistant can offer personalized suggestions. It will also soon be possible to personalize Copilot’s appearance.

Copilot Vision on mobile and Windows: Similar to Apple’s Vision Intelligence feature on recent iPhones, the Copilot mobile app can now analyze your surroundings as well as your photo library to provide more information about what’s on the screen and suggest relevant actions when that makes sense. On Windows, the latest version of the Copilot app will be able to read what’s on your screen and search for content, change settings, and organize your files. This will be coming first to Windows Insiders starting next week.

AI-generated podcasts: Copilot will be able to create personalized podcasts based on your interests. Microsoft said that this can be used to learn more information about topics you’re interested in, and users will be able to choose specific Internet sources that Copilot will use to generate these podcasts. Overall, this sounds quite similar to what Google is doing with its NotebookLM technology.

Microsoft said that it’s starting to roll out the “initial versions” of these new Copilot experiences today. “We will continue to expand availability in the coming weeks and months, which will vary by platform, market and language as we work through the rollout process,” the company said.