Many people are unaware that Windows 11 comes with a powerful artificial intelligence tool that could make their daily tasks less tedious and easier. The flip side of the coin is that this tool doesn’t work for everyone.
Microsoft wants its new AI-based Windows Copilot to become your new universal assistant, but there’s a significant problem: for now, Copilot is only available in the United States, the United Kingdom, and some Asian and South American countries.
Europe is notably absent from this list, and according to Microsoft, this is due to the strict privacy protection regulations of the European Union. I guess there had to be something good about being European.
The tech giant has also confirmed that they are working on a version of Copilot that complies with EU laws and intends to ‘add additional markets over time.’
Copilot is the latest major project in Microsoft’s AI vision, joining Bing Chat, which integrates the popular ChatGPT, and their other large language models (LLM). Copilot utilizes Bing Chat and other Microsoft AI-assisted technologies and is designed to seamlessly integrate into Windows 11, alongside Windows applications and features.
How can you get Windows Copilot?
If you are in a region where Copilot is already available, you can get it by updating Windows 11 to Feature Update Moment 4 (22H2), which is an optional download that you should be able to see in the Windows Update application.
You might need to enable the option ‘Get the latest updates as soon as they are available.’ If you can’t see the Moment 4 update, it’s likely because you live in an area where Copilot is not yet available.
Not all hope is lost if you live in a non-eligible area. You can follow the steps below to get Copilot if you live in a non-compatible region:
- Open Notepad or a similar text editor. Create a new file and name it “Copilot.exe”.
- Pin the new “Copilot.exe” file to the taskbar or create a shortcut on the desktop. Hover over and right-click the file. Do not drag the file from File Explorer – just move it. We need it to be a specific shortcut.
- Select ‘Properties’ from the menu. This should open a Properties (Shortcut) window for the file.
- In the Properties of your “Copilot.exe” file, go to the ‘Shortcut’ tab and change the Target to this address:
C:Windowsexplorer.exe “microsoft-edge:///?ux=copilot&tcp=1&source=taskbar”
- When you click on the shortcut created for Copilot.exe, Windows Copilot will start.
How does Copilot work right now?
At the moment, Copilot operates similarly to Bing Chat in Windows 11, running on WebView (the framework in which applications can display native content in Microsoft Edge browser).
It is still early for Copilot to become a complete AI assistant, and many users are eager to see how Copilot evolves, but the current version certainly has room for improvement. Many users have reported performance issues, and as Windows Latest notes, ‘getting a ‘useful’ result is not easy.’
For instance, Copilot encounters issues when users send multiple requests or switch between Bing Search and other applications. The preview version of Copilot also lacks the deeper integration with Windows that Microsoft extensively talked about, nor does it have the ability to access third-party apps and plugins. However, Microsoft assured users that Copilot will function as promised in the future when speaking with Windows Latest.
Copilot has been introduced as ‘Your everyday AI companion,’ and I believe Microsoft has the means to achieve it, but there is still a long way to go. We doubt that Microsoft would want to retire another digital assistant so soon after bidding farewell to Cortana, and the competition is fierce, with Amazon investing in Anthropic and having the market-standard digital assistant, Alexa.
Anthropic is an AI-focused company, much like OpenAI, emphasizing security and research. It recently received a $4 billion investment from Amazon. Combined with Amazon’s expertise in in-home personal assistance with Alexa, Microsoft might have something to worry about.
