Microsoft's rumored Copilot refresh could turn the AI chatbot into a personalized virtual news presenter — spreading its wings beyond image generation and search

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Aside from generating images and helping you scour the internet, Microsoft's Copilot app could be your personalized AI news presenter.

Copilot Pro on Windows
Copilot Pro on Windows (Image credit: Windows Central)

What you need to know

  • Microsoft is reportedly planning to rebrand Copilot into a personalized AI news presenter.
  • This could be part of the company's broader plan to compete on an even playing field on mobile with OpenAI's widely adopted ChatGPT.
  • The news comes after Microsoft just shipped Copilot Pages and Copilot agents, months after it halted shipping new experiences to improve and enhance existing ones. 

For the better part of this year, things have been fairly quiet on the Microsoft Copilot front, especially after the Redmond giant announced its plan to stop shipping new experiences to improve and enhance existing ones. It's only recently that the company resumed shipping new Copilot experiences at its just-concluded special Copilot experience, including Copilot agents and Copilot Pages. 

Before the event, The Verge's Tom Warren indicated that Microsoft had plans to rebrand its Copilot AI assistant in "the most Microsoft way possible." It's unclear if the rebrand referred to the new Copilot agents and Copilot Pages. And now, a new report by Warren suggests Microsoft could turn Copilot into an AI presenter that can read you the news. 

The reported rebrand is centered on Microsoft's Copilot mobile app, which will ship with a new feature that transforms the AI assistant into a virtual news presenter. According to Warren's sources, Microsoft has been testing the refreshed Copilot app for weeks, which is tangent to other Microsoft apps.

Just like Microsoft News (MSN) or Google Discover, users can select topics they'd like featured in the redesigned Copilot's newsfeed. The suggested topics will be based on your interests and Copilot history. Warren further suggests, "The AI assistant might offer to generate a story for you one day, ask if you to do a workout the next, or simply surface the latest sports scores without you having to ask for them."

Microsoft is playing chess with OpenAI's ChatGPT

Windows 11 Copilot (Image credit: Windows Central)

Admittedly, OpenAI's ChatGPT has had the upper hand on Microsoft Copilot, considering it was launched a few months earlier and is backed by a powerful company focused on developing and improving AI-based technology. This trend continues to be the case, even though both chatbots share similar capabilities.

A recent report by Appfigures indicates OpenAI's GPT-4o launch led to ChatGPT's "biggest spike ever" in revenue and downloads on mobile. Incidentally, the chatbot recently surpassed 200 million weekly active users. Market analysts and experts attributed Copilot AI's slow adoption to Microsoft's poor marketing practices.

Elsewhere, Microsoft insiders claim the top complaint about Copilot is that it doesn't work as well as ChatGPT. The tech giant countered these claims by indicating that this isn't the case, further indicating that users aren't using Copilot as intended, coupled with poor prompt engineering practices. Consequently, Microsoft recently launched Copilot Academy to help address some of the highlighted issues.

The reported Copilot rebrand could drive users to the AI chatbot with its unique "card-based interface" and AI-generated images. This means that users could interact with Copilot beyond generating images and queries. "You can scroll through a list of topics and suggestions without ever having to type to Copilot," added Warren.

This is a developing story, we'll keep tabs on any new developments and keep you posted. 

Kevin Okemwa
Kevin Okemwa
Contributor

Kevin Okemwa is a seasoned tech journalist based in Nairobi, Kenya with lots of experience covering the latest trends and developments in the industry at Windows Central. With a passion for innovation and a keen eye for detail, he has written for leading publications such as OnMSFT, MakeUseOf, and Windows Report, providing insightful analysis and breaking news on everything revolving around the Microsoft ecosystem. You'll also catch him occasionally contributing at iMore about Apple and AI. While AFK and not busy following the ever-emerging trends in tech, you can find him exploring the world or listening to music.

2 Comments Comment from the forums
  • GraniteStateColin
    Not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, getting news summarized could be good -- time and money saving. On the other, I currently pay for some expensive news subscriptions, like the Wall Street Journal (hundreds per year). Would I stop paying if I could get the news for free, and if so, is that fair to the businesses of the places that actually pay for the reporters and investigators who produce the stories that the AI harvests? Would those original reporters and news outlets get compensated in some way? And if not, what does that do long-term to the quality of information available without great writers and investigators conducting interviews, challenging people with follow-up questions, and creating the original stories?

    Also, if the news in the Windows Widgets and on MSN are any indication of what MS thinks are appropriate sources for news, there is a very, very heavy political bias. There a 5 or 6 left-leaning sources for every 1 right-leaning source, maybe even more than that. So if Copilot aggregates all of that for news, would it be better than any one of them by displaying info from all sources (that would be great), or would it weight them similarly to MSN and its Widgets pane and effectively become another way for manipulating people by only presenting half the facts, the half that supports one political party and opposes the other?

    Keep in mind that there are zero news sources without a political bias. That doesn't mean that when MSNBC or Fox presents facts they're wrong. Facts are facts. The problem is that each news outlet only presents a subset of the facts they choose based on what those biased reporters or producers/editors think is important to their readers/viewers. It's the same as the old adage about lies, damn lies, and statistics: facts and statistics can be correct and still paint a distorted picture due to cherry picking, e.g. crime is up but violent crime is down, crime is down nationwide vs. crime is up in the largest cities, etc.

    Nothing wrong with MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NYT, or NPR presenting the facts of interest to the left (well, maybe with NPR because it's partly taxpayer funded) or with the NY Post, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, or Fox News presenting facts of interest to the right. The problem arises when something else comes along CLAIMING to be objective and not equally presenting all facts from all those sources and then amplifying the problem by concealing the bias. At least if I see something on Fox, I know it's probably favorable to the right and if I read it in the NYT, I know it's probably favorable to the left. Or, even worse, AI might let the opinionated voices of the reporters creep into the news summaries and treat those opinions as if it's just citing facts.
    Reply
  • GraniteStateColin
    GraniteStateColin said:
    Not sure how I feel about that. On one hand, getting news summarized could be good -- time and money saving. On the other, I currently pay for some expensive news subscriptions, like the Wall Street Journal (hundreds per year). Would I stop paying if I could get the news for free, and if so, is that fair to the businesses of the places that actually pay for the reporters and investigators who produce the stories that the AI harvests? Would those original reporters and news outlets get compensated in some way? And if not, what does that do long-term to the quality of information available without great writers and investigators conducting interviews, challenging people with follow-up questions, and creating the original stories?

    Also, if the news in the Windows Widgets and on MSN are any indication of what MS thinks are appropriate sources for news, there is a very, very heavy political bias. There a 5 or 6 left-leaning sources for every 1 right-leaning source, maybe even more than that. So if Copilot aggregates all of that for news, would it be better than any one of them by displaying info from all sources (that would be great), or would it weight them similarly to MSN and its Widgets pane and effectively become another way for manipulating people by only presenting half the facts, the half that supports one political party and opposes the other?

    Keep in mind that there are zero news sources without a political bias. That doesn't mean that when MSNBC or Fox presents facts they're wrong. Facts are facts. The problem is that each news outlet only presents a subset of the facts they choose based on what those biased reporters or producers/editors think is important to their readers/viewers. It's the same as the old adage about lies, damn lies, and statistics: facts and statistics can be correct and still paint a distorted picture due to cherry picking, e.g. crime is up but violent crime is down, crime is down nationwide vs. crime is up in the largest cities, etc.

    Nothing wrong with MSNBC, CNN, ABC, NYT, or NPR presenting the facts of interest to the left (well, maybe with NPR because it's partly taxpayer funded) or with the NY Post, Washington Examiner, Washington Times, or Fox News presenting facts of interest to the right. The problem arises when something else comes along CLAIMING to be objective and not equally presenting all facts from all those sources and then amplifying the problem by concealing the bias. At least if I see something on Fox, I know it's probably favorable to the right and if I read it in the NYT, I know it's probably favorable to the left. Or, even worse, AI might let the opinionated voices of the reporters creep into the news summaries and treat those opinions as if it's just citing facts.

    I have since confirmed that WSJ does have a content sharing contract with Open AI. I suspect (but am not certain) that either covers usage for the MS implementation of Copilot (built on Open AI's GPT) or that they have a direct contract with MS too.
    Reply