AI is still a contentious topic, but it's here to stay. I use it most days, and not just because Microsoft is doing its best to stuff it inside every product it makes.
It has its uses, and since the dawn of ChatGPT, then Bing Chat which became Copilot, I've found ways to integrate the tech into my life that I enjoy using.
On paper, the idea of an Xbox Copilot (or Copilot for Gaming as its formal name goes), such as the one Microsoft has recently announced, sounds pretty great. Apart from the bit where you have to use your phone to interact with it. I don't want to have to pick up my phone while I'm gaming.
Remember Kinect? Yet another piece of Microsoft hardware that was years ahead of its time and subsequently sent to the graveyard? Tell me I'm wrong when I say that Kinect + Xbox Copilot would be the way to use it?
Voice interaction on the same device versus picking up your phone
The Kinect launched at the wrong time. Or rather, the second generation of it, did. The Xbox 360 version was this quirky add-on that introduced a new way to play games. When the Xbox One debuted, it was your voice-controlled partner in crime.
I enjoyed barking commands at my Xbox One and having it obey, all thanks to the Kinect. It started as a novelty way to turn the console on and off, but became much more than that.
When I had my first child, using the Kinect to navigate the TV/media options with a baby in my arms was a new parent's dream. Back when I had my Cable TV box hooked up to the Xbox, and OneGuide was a thing. In the good old days.
Now fast-forward to a world where AI is becoming a serious tool and Microsoft is determined to make us use it on everything. I can't be the only person who thinks a native Copilot on the Xbox console, making use of a Kinect would have just been better?
Sure, you can use voice with your phone, but that's another device, in a situation where you're already using a console, a TV, and a controller. Unless you're Otto Octavius, you're going to need to take a hand off your game to use your Copilot.
My colleague, Samuel Tolbert, summed it up when writing about the launch of the Xbox Copilot.
"No matter if I'm by myself or chatting with friends, I don't want to yell at a screen (especially a second, smaller one) to get additional functionality or enjoyment out of what I'm playing."
It's too late for Kinect now, but it doesn't stop it making sense
At some point, you would have to assume Microsoft will bring some form of Copilot onto the actual Xbox console. If we're getting AI in Notepad on Windows 11, it feels like a given.
The trouble is that the ready-made hardware we once had is now dead. Even if you have a Kinect, you can't plug it into the new generation consoles.
I would be inclined to interact with Copilot on the console, but only with voice. When I'm playing a game, I don't want to have to take my attention away from that. There's no chance I'm alone on that.
If you have to stop playing to use an AI chatbot, it's dead in the water. If this happens in the future, it simply has to have a voice element. That of course means you need a microphone attached to the console, but without Kinect to rely on, it's all we can hope for.
It also needs to be seamlessly usable with voice, for the same reason. You can't be expected to pause what you're doing just to play with Microsoft's latest AI toy. Launch it, talk to it, make it fade away, all without interrupting what you're actually doing.
Will this happen? Who knows. But as with so many other things Microsoft has made, then killed, it's a big old case of "what if?"
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