Copilot (23H2)

Windows 11 version 23H2 introduces a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) companion called Copilot that combines the content creation capabilities and intelligence of Microsoft Copilot in Bing with a limited selection of useful Windows setting configuration features.
In its initial release, Copilot in Windows 11 is available in preview in North America and parts of Asia and South America. But it will come to additional markets over time.
Copilot appears as a sidebar on the Windows 11 Desktop, and it provides a text-based chat interface with which you can ask questions and interact with its underlying AI capabilities.

Microsoft Copilot is the underlying set of foundational AI-based services that Microsoft provides in a variety of products and services. For example, it is also used by Bing, Bing Image Creator, Microsoft Edge, and Copilot in Microsoft 365 for businesses (and, soon, for consumers too). This common foundation means that when third-party developers extend the capabilities of Microsoft Copilot, those new capabilities will work with all of these offerings, including Copilot in Windows 11.
A bit of history
To understand Copilot, one needs to understand how we got here. After all, this and the other new AI capabilities Microsoft is introducing in Windows 11 version 23H2 seemed to come out of nowhere. So here is a short slice of recent history that helps explain it.

In January 2023, Microsoft announced that it was expanding its multi-year, multi-billion-dollar investment in the pioneering AI firm OpenAI with the express aim of "completely transforming" every Microsoft product with AI capabilities. Previous to this, AI was seen as something futuristic, but OpenAI's rapid AI advances had reached the point where Microsoft leadership felt the technology could be used more broadly.

In February 2023, Microsoft announced Copilot in Bing (originally called Bing Chat), an "AI-powered copilot for the web" built on OpenAI's ChatGPT and a proprietary Microsoft AI model called Prometheus that it said provided "more relevant, timely and targeted results with improved safety." Like ChatGPT, Copilot in Bing is what's sometimes called a chatbot. It's an alternative to traditional web search that uses a chat experience similar to text messaging that lets users easily refine complex searches using text-based prompts until they get what they're looking for. Copilot in Bing can also summarize information and even generate written content: For example, it can help you compose an email or other correspondence, kickstart a blog post, resume, or other work, and even personalize the tone, length, phrasing, and other aspects of its output.

In March 2023, Microsoft announced Bing Image Creator, an AI-powered image creation tool based on OpenAI's DALL-E technologies. As with that tool, users can simply describe the image they have in mind using a text prompt, and Bing Image Creator will generate multiple versions, and in a wide range of styles, from wh...