Microsoft wants you to chat with its browser now – but can you trust this Copilot?

Microsoft’s on a relentless quest to embed its Copilot AI into every software product it owns. That campaign takes another big step forward today with the addition of some new generative AI features in the company’s Edge browser.

Today’s release beefs up the capabilities of Copilot Mode, the chat-based search interface for Edge, on Windows PCs and Macs. You can use natural voice commands to navigate pages, and the chatbot can see all the open tabs in the current browser window instead of being limited to whatever’s on the current page.

Also: Microsoft gives Copilot a face – here’s how to try your new Appearance chat buddy

If that sounds appealing, you can go to the Copilot Mode sign-in page and flip a switch that lets you enable Copilot Mode in Edge Settings. That replaces the old search box with a Copilot chat input box that’s designed to handle search, chat, and web navigation. It also gives you the option to open Copilot Mode in a sidebar, where you can ask it questions about the current set of open tabs.

For now, at least, this feature requires users to opt in. It’s also free, but only for a limited time, Microsoft says, without offering any clues as to what it will cost and when the meter will start running.

Also: Microsoft’s Copilot Vision can now see and analyze your entire Windows desktop

The blog post announcing today’s changes is typically upbeat, anthropomorphizing the Copilot features to put a friendly face on what is, deep down, a computational exercise happening in Microsoft’s data centers. It also makes some pretty wild promises along the way: “Copilot understands your intent and helps you get started faster,” we are told. “Copilot Mode also sees the full picture across your open tabs, and you can even instruct it to handle some tasks.”

Well, no, neither of those statements is true. The Copilot generative AI tool is not human. It is not sentient. It cannot possibly “understand your intent” or “see the full picture” of anything. What it can do is make inferences about those open tabs based on its training data and whatever history it’s saved from its interactions with you, generate some text from those inferences in response to your prompt, and then present the results to you in a way that is diabolically persuasive. There’s a very good chance it will get some of those things right. But it might also offer up some outright fabrications, as the disclaimers keep warning you:

Copilot aims to respond with reliable sources, but AI can make mistakes, and third-party content on the internet may not always be accurate or reliable. Copilot may misrepresent the information it finds, and you may see responses that sound convincing but are incomplete, inaccurate, or inappropriate. Use your judgment and double check facts before making decisions or taking action based on Copilot’s responses.

Also: Microsoft’s big AI update for Windows 11 is here – what’s new

The examples that accompany those breathless promises are pretty anodyne. Using Copilot Mode in Edge, a woman asks Copilot to pull a recipe out of a webpage and convert its metric ingredients to “cups and Fahrenheit.” An earnest young man building a website for his side hustle asks Copilot to locate a particular spot in the “how to build your website” video. A traveler asks Copilot to select the best beachfront hotel on a South American beach, using information from a handful of open tabs.

Some of the other scenarios are a bit more ambitious, like finding a nearby place to go paddleboarding and automatically booking an appointment for “after work, next Wednesday.” Microsoft’s video makes it look effortless, but you won’t be able to try these agent-centric Copilot tasks at home yet.

 “Coming soon,” the accompanying post says, “you will be able to give Copilot permission to access the additional browser context it needs, such as your history and credentials, to take more advanced and seamless actions — like booking reservations or managing errands on your behalf.”

Also: The Surface Laptop is still one of my favorite Copilot+ PCs

“Copilot Mode is experimental and will evolve over time, and we’re just getting started,” we are warned. Do you really want an experimental AI-based chatbot to spend your money and book appointments on your behalf? Are you sure?

One thing that’s obvious from Microsoft’s recent AI work is the effort to push Bing into the background so far that it’s nearly invisible. Copilot is the new face of search in Microsoft’s properties, even if it’s using the same database as its predecessor.

The Copilot brand still has some magic and mystery. We’ll see how long that lasts.

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