- Windows 11’s Copilot app just got an update to testers
- This introduces a strong new natural language -based search
- There are also some useful changes to the app’s website
Windows 11S Copilot app gets a deeper and more powerful search functionality and more in addition – even if this is only in testing for now.
The Verge reports that Microsoft is rolling an update to the Copilot app for Windows Insiders (the running test versions of Windows 11) that have Copilot+ PCS.
These devices have the necessary NPU to run this new AI search, which allows you to use natural language in queries and will dive into files to find results for you.
So, as Microsoft points out, you can ask a conversation request as ‘Find the file with the Tiramisu recipe’ and the COPILOT app will chase through the files on your PC to find it. Or similarly you can ask ‘Find pictures of my dog on the beach’ and AI will choose these pictures specifically. Microsoft calls this functionality a ‘semantic file search’.
Microsoft also brings in a rejection of the CoPilot app, which has recently used files, apps and conversations, one step designed to make it easy for you to jump back to what you did earlier.
You can also click on the newly used files to query them with Copilot or choose to get help with apps via a specific ‘guided help’ threat-this fires up a copilot-vision session to guide you through the said app.
Testers who want to give the new Copilot app a vortex need to get the latest update from the Microsoft store in Windows 11.
Analysis: AI than Game
Your immediate concern here may be privacy, and Microsoft has been quick to alleviate any fear according to these lines in his blog post introducing these changes. The company makes it clear that copilot surfaces recently used, just via the standard ‘recent’ directory that Windows 11 maintains-so-AI app does not dig into your system more deeply than the items that us hold themselves.
Microsoft clarifies that: “Copilot does not scan your entire system or upload something automatically.” But when you directly ask a file with copilot, it is uploaded in this case for treatment, but “nothing is shared unless you explicitly do”.
As for the semantic file search ability, I assume it works in the same way as AI supercharging of Windows 11’s search on itself on Copilot+ PCS (when Microsoft introduced natural language queries via the search box on the taskbar).
Microsoft apparently wants to increase the search with AI everywhere, and so on Copilot+ PCS we have that we have shown Windows 11 search, as well as recall (a screen-based AI search that utilizes the activity on your PC), and now an improved natural language search within the COPILOT app itself.
What is the end game of pushing AI in search so strong? Well, search is an obvious use of use for AI, and I will speculate that Copilot eventually takes over all Windows search tasks.
There will be no basic Windows search at all – if you want to find things on your PC, you ask Copilot, the end of the story. And hopefully it ends the search without showing you 15 related ‘suggestions’ or ‘recommendations’ about what else you need to perform the task AI thinks you are performing.
