Copilot gets more personal with its “Real Talk” mode and group chats

Microsoft is rolling out some important changes to its Copilot AI Assistant today. There’s a new Groups feature that connects multiple people in a Copilot chat, a memory to let Copilot learn things about you, a new “Real Talk” mode that will bring back some of the early Copilot personality, and more.

Copilot groups are designed for groups of friends, classmates, and even teammates to use Copilot in one session. Microsoft is targeting this at people who need to make a plan or solve problems together, and the company supports up to 32 people in Copilot groups, in an effort to make AI more social.

“I think you’re going to see groups of two or three dominating this,” Jacob Andreu, executive vice president of product and growth at Microsoft AI, says in an interview. Edge. “I think it will actually be a lot of small groups, and it won’t be as if a long-standing group chat suddenly has AI in it.”

Although Copilot Groups seems better suited to business environments, it is only launching within the US consumer version of Copilot today and not the business-focused Microsoft 365 Copilot. But this may change in the future. “I think it would be great in business contexts,” Andreu says. “Bringing experiences like this to Microsoft 365 is going to be really important.”

Microsoft is also adding an optional “Real Talk” mode to Copilot that will adapt to the way you ask questions and have more challenging responses. When Microsoft first launched Copilot as its Bing AI chatbot, it would often be asked to refer to itself as Sydney and would sometimes respond rudely to users. While the Real Talk mode doesn’t bring back the full grittiness of Sydney, it looks like the Copilot is about to get a little more personality in its responses.

“In real talk, this mode will fit your style, add its own perspective, and maybe be a little smarter than people expect,” says Andrew. “It will challenge you too, so he won’t just agree with everything you say.” Real talk will not be the default mode, it will just be another mode you select in the drop down menu, also limited to text only and not Copilot’s voice mode.

The real talk will be able to take advantage of the improvements made to Copilot’s memory features. “Copilot has a much better memory,” Andrew explains. “It will be able to remember facts about you, the people you care about, your life, and the things you work on.”

You’ll also be able to control what Copilot knows about you. “You’ll be able to see a list of everything Copilot knows about you, and you’ll be able to go in and delete things,” Andrew says. “We also really want to invest in doing a lot of this via conversation.” You’ll be able to use Copilot’s voice mode to ask the AI ​​assistant to forget everything it knows about your partner, for example.

Copilot is also getting a shakeup in how it answers health-related questions by improving how it sources responses and links them to trusted sources like Harvard Health. “Copilot also helps you find the right doctors quickly and confidently, matching based on location, language, and other preferences,” Microsoft says.

Microsoft is also updating its Copilot voice mode to introduce Mico, a new Clippy-like character. It will react to expressions in real time and bounce around the copilot’s window. It also has a Learn Live mode that acts as a tutor. You can Read all about Miko here.