Windows Copilot, Microsoft’s AI assistant for Windows 11, is now rolling out to many more testers.
Neowin spotted that Microsoft quietly updated its blog post for build 23493 in the Dev channel to let us know that Copilot is being made available to every tester.
You may recall that when this build was first released at the end of June, Copilot was only made available to a limited number of testers in the Dev channel, as Microsoft noted that it was going to “monitor feedback and see how it lands before pushing it out to everyone”.
Well, the feedback has evidently been received, and going by it, the software giant clearly feels it was sound enough to fully roll out Windows Copilot to everyone.
Microsoft updated its blog post to say: “The Windows Copilot Preview is now available to all Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel. Insiders may need to reboot to have it show up.”
Analysis: Mixed messages with confidence levels here
This is a slightly odd one. On the one hand, Microsoft must have a certain level of confidence in how Copilot is doing in testing to flip the switch to broaden the rollout to everyone.
On the other hand, Microsoft did this very quietly with just a quick update on its blog, and hardly made any fuss about what is in fact quite a major move. In that sense, the tech giant's confidence in Copilot appears shakier, and it all feels a bit under the radar. (Why not announce a full rollout with the next preview and blog post? Because it seems like a sizeable step forward for Copilot).
Maybe we’re reading too much into this – it wouldn’t be the first time – but we find it difficult to believe Microsoft is all that happy with Copilot, not based on the online feedback we’ve seen from Dev testers thus far. Those comments mainly revolve around how very barebones Copilot is – with barely any Windows settings that can be adjusted in this initial incarnation – and also how buggy it is.
Neowin underlines the latter point in its report, noting that Copilot currently has a lot of bugs that make it rather a ‘frustrating’ feature to use.
Thus far, then, the Copilot rollout seems a bit of an odd process, and compounding this matter is that the AI turned up in Dev first, and Canary testers – the earliest channel for cutting-edge additions to Windows 11 – haven’t got a look in yet. Indeed, some people have switched from Canary back to the Dev channel because of this.
Mind you, Canary testers, or anyone else, could always avail themselves of an alternative to Copilot on the Windows 11 desktop – namely a resurrected ChatGPT-powered Clippy (yes, really).
