Microsoft introduces new features focusing on design to Copilot

Microsoft’s AI-powered chatbots and assistants portfolio, Copilot, is set to receive several enhancements in line with a prominent Super Bowl LVIII advertising campaign. Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi, in a post on the official Microsoft blog, shares what updates users can anticipate.

“Today marks exactly one year since our entry into AI-powered experiences for people with Bing Chat,” he wrote. “In that year, we’ve learned so many new things, and seen the use of our Copilot experiences explode with over 5 billion chats and 5 billion images created to date . . . Now with Copilot as our singular experience for people looking to get more out of AI creation, we’re introducing further . . . capabilities.”

Microsoft’s Copilot, available on the web, Android, and iOS, now boasts an enhanced AI model, Deucalion, and a sleeker interface, according to Yusuf Mehdi. The fresh design includes simplified answer presentations and a carousel of recommended questions to propose to Copilot, such as “How would you describe AI to a sixth-grade student?”.

In addition, the ‘Designer’ function in Copilot—which utilizes generative AI models like OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 to transform questions into visuals—has been equipped with new editing abilities.

English-speaking Copilot users from the U.S., U.K., Australia, India, and New Zealand can now modify images within a chat flow, including colorizing elements, blurring backgrounds, or changing the image style to options like pixel art. Furthermore, Copilot Pro subscribers—part of Microsoft’s $20 monthly premium plan—can resize and recreate images in both portrait (“square”) and landscape views.

Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Mehdi hinted at the near-future addition of Designer GPT to Copilot. This feature will provide users with an immersive canvas inside Copilot to “visualize their ideas.”

Designer, which made waves earlier this year due to misuse in creating inappropriate deepfakes of public figures, has implemented measures to prevent such misuse, according to Microsoft. However, staying ahead of potential abuses will likely continue to be a persistent challenge.

As Mehdi emphasized, Microsoft aims to “empower every person and organization on the planet to achieve more” via strides in AI, bringing their AI advancements to the broader population with Copilot.

While outlining upcoming improvements, Mehdi did not touch on the performance problems associated with Copilot Pro, which have been a recurring concern among initial subscribers.

Copilot Pro is expected to offer priority access to the OpenAI models that power Copilot, even during times of high demand. However, users have shared their frustrations regarding unusually long generation times and other potential bugs. Recent speculation from Windows Central suggests the cause might be inadequate server capacity, but without an official statement from Microsoft, it remains uncertain.