Microsoft recently announced enhancements to Copilot, their suite of AI powered chatbots and assistants. The announcement coincides with their attention-grabbing Super Bowl LVIII ad campaign.
In a Microsoft official blog post, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer, explained what users can expect. He emphasized that Copilot is now a single experience for users who want to make the most of AI.
The Copilot experience on the web, Android, and iOS is now equipped with an improved AI model, Deucalion, along with a “sleeker look and feel,” Mehdi said. These enhancements include cleaner answer styling and a carousel of suggested prompts to give Copilot instructions (e.g., “How would you explain AI to a sixth grader?”).
Designer in Copilot: Image Editing and New Visual Canvas
Meanwhile, Designer in Copilot, a tool that leverages generative AI models like OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 to turn instructions into images, now has new editing capabilities. All English-speaking Copilot users in the US, UK, Australia, India, and New Zealand can now edit images directly within the chat flow.
Some examples include changing the color of an object, blurring the background of an image, or changing the style of an image. With Copilot Pro at $20 per month, subscribers can resize and regenerate images between “square” (portrait) and landscape.
Designer Controversy and Security Enhancements
Designer sparked controversy earlier this year. Some users used the tool to create deepfake pornography of Taylor Swift and spread it on X (formerly Twitter). Microsoft claims that Designer has safeguards to prevent inappropriate instructions.
However, some users managed to find loopholes to trick the system and generate explicit content. Last month, Microsoft stated that it had closed the loopholes by banning the depiction of celebrity images. However, this is likely to be an endless race between perpetrators and vendors.
Democratizing AI for All
“Microsoft’s advances in AI align with our company mission to empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more,” Mehdi continued. “With Copilot, we are democratizing our breakthroughs in AI to help make the promise of AI real for everyone.”
Mehdi did not address performance issues with Copilot Pro, which is a common complaint among early adopters. Copilot Pro was supposed to come with priority access to the OpenAI models that underlie Copilot even during peak hours.
However, users reported long wait times and other bugs that may be related. Windows Central speculates that the root cause is insufficient server capacity, but without official comment, it is impossible to know for sure.
Microsoft continues to enhance Copilot with exciting new features. These include image editing and idea visualization canvases. However, they also face challenges in keeping the platform safe and addressing performance issues experienced by Copilot Pro users.
Read Also: New iCloud for Windows: Easier Syncing