One of the most anticipated novelties of the 23H2 update and Windows 11 is Copilot. This will be the operating system’s new personal assistant, supported by artificial intelligence, with which the user will be able to consult and receive assistance when configuring and starting his computer. This new feature has caused a lot of excitement since it was announced, and it’s likely that it will change the way we use and configure our computer. But Microsoft is still hiding an ace up its sleeve, and it’s about to reveal it to unleash its full power.
Windows Copilot, while it sounds somewhat revolutionary, is in practice quite simple: it’s the search engine, Bing.com, that runs on top of Microsoft Edge WebView within the Windows desktop and with many URIs for different Windows configuration options. Furthermore, Microsoft has no plans (for now at least) to release an original version of its Copilot software that functions as a standalone original program. Although what it will do is improve its functionality to multiply its usefulness by a thousand.
Plugins are coming to Windows Copilot
Instead of burdening Copilot with integrations, making it a very slow and cumbersome tool for users’ computers, Microsoft will make it a modular tool. This means that instead of integrating all functionality into its core, as it is doing now, what we will see will be possibility Install plugins inside the engine so we can add features to it on demand.
We can see this in the latest OS build, build 23506. The Copilot version of this Windows version points to a new executable called “InboxPluginsHost.exe”, which, together with the “InboxPlugins.dll” library, is an add-on so that this processor can Check the user’s inbox.
In addition to the ability to check inboxes, we may also see third-party plugins in the future that make Copilot a much more modular tool. For example, we might see an add-on on top of ChatGPT, or even Bard, so we can take direct advantage of these AI features. Even for bug control or integration with other software we have installed on the computer.
How will these plug-ins be downloaded? Although it is not yet known, since everything is in a very early version, it is likely that Microsoft will enable a dedicated store (as is the case with Game Bar extensions) in which we can explore and download these add-ons to adapt the tool to our needs.
How to try a co-pilot
At the moment, Copilot is only available for Windows 11 Insiders, so to test it, we have to install this Windows 11 beta, as well as the Canary branch of the browser, Edge. Also, at the moment, it is a very primitive version, limited to a few actions.
The final version of Copilot will reach all users by the end of the year, when Microsoft will finally release version 23H2 of its operating system. By then, we will have it fully operational.
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