Microsoft's AI CEO wants to create Copilot companions that we'll all have relationships with

Microsoft is celebrating its 50th anniversary, a significant milestone for a tech company still at the forefront of the industry. Like other software and hardware giants, Microsoft is pivoting toward AI for its cloud-based computing business, Windows, and devices like Xbox gaming consoles.

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As part of its Windows strategy, all of the software's AI features fall under the Copilot banner. Copilot+ PCs are mobile devices that can use AI tools locally using powerful NPU hardware. From image generation to chatbots, summarizing documents, and transcribing audio live, Microsoft's AI endgame for Windows is to create a Copilot companion for everyone - one that will get to know you and with whom Windows users will form a relationship.

"We're really trying to land this idea that everybody is going to have their own personalized AI companion," said Mustafa Suleyman in an interview with The Associated Press. Of course, there's no timeline for this, but AI is quickly becoming a part of Microsoft's present and near future.

"It will, over time, have its own name, its own style," Mustafa Suleyman continues. "It will adapt to you. It may also have its own visual appearance and expressions." Suleyman also added that as this Copilot AI companion will have a memory of everything that you've shared, it will become more than a tool, and the AI will form a "lasting, meaningful relationship" with users. This AI will feature "visual memory," which sounds a little ominous in how it will record everything you do.

As for what this AI companion will do other than become a digital friend and partner, it will be able to sort through all of your daily admin tasks, from booking things to scheduling and researching. "We've never had anything like that before that can automate all of those things," Mustafa Suleyman concludes. "It's going to be pretty amazing."

I hope that whatever avatars Microsoft chooses for its upcoming Copilot AI companion, there's a Clippy version.