Microsoft celebrates its 50th anniversary by letting Copilot see what you see

During a 50th anniversary event at its Redmond, Washington headquarters, Microsoft executive vice president and CEO of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, detailed new features for Copilot to make it a true companion on Windows and smartphone platforms.

Many of these features have appeared in other AI programs, but others, like Vision, may help change the way you use your computer, should they become widely adopted.

Copilot Vision has moved off the web and into Windows and smartphone apps. This is likely the biggest feature to affect PC users in the near future.

On mobile, Copilot can look through your camera and analyze your surroundings. You could ask Copilot questions about what you see and have it analyze real-time video or anything stored in your camera roll. One example Microsoft provided is showing Copilot pictures of plants to get more information on how to better take care of them. The company had an example on stage where Suleyman pointed a phone at dinosaur toys and asked for more information about the creatures.

Windows users can let Copilot view their screen and search across apps, browser tabs, and files for information. Microsoft also says that Copilot will be able to change settings, organize files, or work on projects without switching between apps.

Apple had suggested that Siri could do this with Apple Intelligence, but those features have been delayed.

For Windows, Vision will first roll out to Windows Insiders next week and then be distributed "more broadly afterwards."

If you don't have an app up, that's not an issue. Microsoft is rolling out Actions, a feature that lets Copilot complete tasks without you doing anything but prompting it. To some degree, this sounds like OpenAI's Operator. For example, you can ask the AI to make dinner reservations or send someone a gift

While Actions should work on "most websites," launch partners include Book.com, Expedia, Kayak, OpenTable, Tripadvisor, and 1-800-Flowers.

Microsoft is also adding a Deep Research functionality that analyzes multiple sources and combines information from across the web or documents. We've seen this in ChatGPT and DeepSeek, and now it's coming to Copilot.

Copilot is also powering search (which ChatGPT is also doing), grabbing information from multiple sites in Bing in order to come up with a broad report with multiple citations.

"This allows you to be just a click away from your favorite publishers and content owners," Microsoft's

reads.

Copilot will be able to learn about you. As you interact with the AI, it will remember details you tell it, which Microsoft says will make responses richer and allow for proactive action.

If you don't want Copilot to get to know you that well, you can opt out entirely or limit what it remembers through a user dashboard.

Copilot's other new features are varied and, frankly, less interesting. There's an option to have Copilot create a podcast based on your interests. If you really want to learn about art or horticulture while doing the dishes, all you have to do is ask Copilot for a podcast about it.

The Copliot Shopping feature researches products and informs you about price drops (the latter of which has been done manually by sites like camelcamelcamel.com for years). But Copilot will also let you make purchases directly through the phone app, seemingly bypassing the store altogether by using the AI in an agentic way.

Pages is effectively an organizer. You can hand Copilot a ton of documents, notes, or other files, and have Copilot put them together into a clean outline for brainstorming, studying, or journaling.

Andrew E. Freedman is a senior editor at Tom's Hardware focusing on laptops, desktops and gaming. He also keeps up with the latest news. A lover of all things gaming and tech, his previous work has shown up in Tom's Guide, Laptop Mag, Kotaku, PCMag and Complex, among others. Follow him on Threads @FreedmanAE and Mastodon @FreedmanAE.mastodon.social.