Microsoft’s Copilot AI Assistant Now Gets A Face That People Can Actually Talk To | Tech News

Copilot assistant now has a face that people can talk to

Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant is not as popular as Gemini or even ChatGPT so the company is now making a few changes to bring more people to use its AI chatbot. And one of the plans is to have human AI portraits as characters that mimic the AI chatbot and talk to people.

The experimental Portraits feature is available in select regions for now and you have around 40 avatars in human form that will have the conversation on behalf of the AI with you. This is only available for people above 18 years and in select regions.

AI Human Portraits For Copilot: But Why? 

So why has Microsoft made this change for its AI assistant and given it a human face? The company’s AI chief Mustafa Suleyman claims the Portraits were developed because people actually wanted a face for the AI assistant which made them comfortable talking to with their voice. 

This is probably the first time we are hearing a tech giant share this feedback from the users, which is also a parallel view to how Google and OpenAI have operated their respective AI ecosystems so far. 

Natural conversation is part of the AI expertise and offering a face means users get better equipped to the chatbot and probably open up a lot more than they are currently. The biggest change with the new feature is that Microsoft is using human characters as the basis of the new AI avatars and they are not animated cartoons. 

Not Enough

Copilot is available as the default AI assistant on Windows 11 PCs, Microsoft 365 suite and other applications. Even then, ChatGPT has the lead, followed by Gemini and others. Copilot does have the right armoury to attract users but the marketability has to improve, especially for the end users. 

OpenAI does that quite well and we have seen with the Studio Ghibli style photos earlier. Now, the company is bringing an AI-based Sora app which lets you create and remix videos by uploading your own photo. Microsoft is too focused on the enterprises, it tends to forget that the public consumer is equally vital in the AI race, and will the new Copilot avatar connect with these users? Only time will tell.