Microsoft is bringing its Copilot chatbot to Windows 10

Microsoft It said Thursday it will soon begin testing the Copilot chatbot in an update to the widely used Windows 10 operating system.

Microsoft began rolling out an update on October 31 that features Copilot for its latest operating system, Windows 11. But according to StatCounter estimates, among Windows PCs, Windows 11’s share is about 27%, and Windows 10 leads with about 68%.

Technology companies large and small have rushed to bring capabilities similar to ChatGPT, the hugely popular chatbot released last year by Microsoft-backed OpenAI.

ChatGPT, with 100 million weekly active users, employs generative artificial intelligence, which relies on large language models trained on web data to generate images, audio and text with a few words of human instruction. Chatbots can answer questions, summarize documents, and create email drafts.

Windows remains a central, attractive part of Microsoft’s lineup, and the company is taking a cautious approach to deploying Copilot there compared to the Bing search engine, Edge browser and Dynamics business software, where it has grown more quickly. . In Windows, Copilot can serve as an “everyday AI companion,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in an October conference call with analysts.

Microsoft wants to determine how Copilot on Windows 10 might differ from Windows 11 and find ways to boost quality and performance, vice president Aaron Woodman said during a media briefing this week.

The company is being careful while bringing Copilot to its Office apps as well. It began selling licenses to Copilot for Microsoft 365 subscriptions earlier this month after a one-month early access program.

Microsoft will offer CoPilot for PCs in the Release Preview Channel running Windows 10, version 22H2. It will be available only for Home and Pro versions of the operating system. But PCs running Windows 10 Pro that organizations manage will not be part of the initial CoPilot distribution. According to a blog post, neither will PCs with enterprise and education versions of the operating system.

Those interested in this feature can open the Settings app, navigate to Update & Security, and choose Windows Update. From there, they can turn on the switch labeled “Get the latest updates as they become available” and click the “Check for updates” button.

Once CoPilot arrives, a new button will appear on the right side of the Windows taskbar. Clicking it will open a chat window on the right side of the screen. It will be similar to Copilot in Bing and won’t be able to perform as many PC-related tasks as Copilot in Windows 11, Woodman said, because some elements of Windows 11 aren’t present in Windows 10. Windows 10 also has low system requirements.

Windows 10 support will end in October 2025. After that, many organizations can upgrade their PCs to Windows 11.

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