Microsoft released a new batch of features for its AI assistant on Thursday. This includes an ambitious project that builds artificial intelligence directly into one of its most central products. More than a simple extension, the new CoPilot Mode in Microsoft’s Edge browser is the company’s take on the long-hyped AI browser category. It is designed to be an intelligent and flexible assistant that follows you as you browse the web.
Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, described the new product in those terms. He wrote that Copilot Mode in Edge is evolving into an AI browser that acts as your dynamic, intelligent companion. With user permission, Copilot can see and reason over open tabs, summarize and compare information, and even take actions like booking a hotel or filling out forms.
This announcement comes just two days after a similar launch from OpenAI, which showed off its new Atlas browser. Of course, Copilot’s release had been scheduled for weeks, and the new Copilot Mode has likely been in development for months. Neither company invented the idea of an AI-assisted web browser, but the visual similarity between the two products is hard to ignore.
A demo frame from Microsoft’s Copilot for Edge announcement and a demo frame from OpenAI’s Atlas announcement show two very similar pictures. The Copilot for Edge background is a little darker, there is text instead of a logo, and the close and minimize buttons follow Windows conventions instead of MacOS conventions. Beyond that, Copilot places its ride-along function in a new tab instead of a split-screen, but that is about the only difference. It is pretty much the same product.
Part of the similarity is functional. People generally like clean browsers, and there are only so many ways to integrate a chatbot window into the new tab screen. For users, the main difference will come from the underlying AI models, so a little visual similarity may not make a big practical difference. After all, most web browsers look the same anyway.
However, given the high stakes of the AI race and the tense state of play between Microsoft and OpenAI, it seems significant that both of these browsers were released in the same week.