Microsoft released a new batch of features for its AI assistant on Thursday. This included an ambitious project that builds artificial intelligence directly into one of its most central products. More than a simple extension, the Copilot Mode in Microsoft’s Edge browser is Microsoft’s take on the long-hyped AI browser category. It is designed to be an intelligent and flexible AI assistant that follows you as you browse the web.
Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, described the new product in those terms in the announcement. He wrote that Copilot Mode in Edge is evolving into an AI browser that is your dynamic, intelligent companion. With your permission, Copilot can see and reason over your open tabs, summarize and compare information, and even take actions like booking a hotel or filling out forms.
The official launch for Edge’s Copilot Mode was in July. At that time, it rolled out with basic features like a search bar on new tabs and natural voice navigation. The mode was opt-in and did not receive a great deal of attention. At Thursday’s event, Microsoft became more ambitious by introducing new features. These include Actions that allow Copilot to fill out forms or book hotels and Journeys that let Copilot trace connections between your open tabs. This is not a huge shift in the product, but it was enough to put the idea of the AI browser at center stage.
The 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 probably 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.
These are 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 puts its ride-along function in a new tab instead of a split-screen, but that is about it. It is pretty much the same product.
Part of the similarity is functional. People 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 models, so a little visual similarity may not make too big a difference. Browsers mostly look the same anyway. But given the high stakes of the AI race and the tense state of play between the two companies, it seems significant that we got both of these browsers in the same week.
A previous version of this post erroneously referred to the October 23rd event as the initial launch of Copilot for Edge. In fact, the feature was launched in July.