What happened now? Today, Microsoft gave its Edge browser a new tool called “Copilot”. The co-pilot is the AI assistant on the right sidebar of the Edge. It runs on Bing Chat, which Microsoft has yet to fully open to the public. If you already have access to it, you’re fine. Otherwise, you won’t see these features in your browser.
To open the Copilot sidebar, click the Bing Chat logo in the top right corner of Edge. Before you can get started, you need to set your bot to one of three options: Accurate, Creative, or Balanced. The settings are self-explanatory and will accordingly affect Bing’s responses to your queries.
You must also allow Bing to read the page you are visiting. Allowing this is optional, but if you deny permission, you will miss out on some of the benefits of Copilot. For example, allowing Bing to parse a page allows you to summarize its content.
Once set up, you can start using Copilot. The Chat tab works as you would expect. Ask a question and get an answer in plain language. It’s like having Bing Chat right at your fingertips instead of having to go to it. website. Of course, remember that sometimes a chatbot isn’t true, like when he embarrassedly gave The New York Times terrible advice about pronunciation a few Spanish words.
It’s even funnier in context. Oh, yes. Very detailed, accurate and systematized. https://t.co/LoRXz0dlXh pic.twitter.com/jgE31TlYcy
— Austin Walker (@austin_walker) March 14, 2023
The Insights tab is like a shortcut for asking Bing to take stock of a web page, but it’s messy. It takes various keywords from the content and provides links and related information. Its usefulness depends on whether you’re looking for an actual overview of the page’s content, or if you want external sites to talk more about it. If you want a quick overview, you’d better ask for it in the Chat tab.
Perhaps more useful is the Compose tab in Copilot. Users can use it to create a variety of content. After entering a topic or Bing suggestion to write about, users can set several options to tailor the length and tone of the story. Some tone settings include fun, informative, and professional, while the length option has long, medium, and short settings. PC World notes that co-pilot produced about 370 words of text with long emphasis.
There is also a setting that allows you to customize whether the material is for an email, blog post, paragraph, or just a list of ideas. Again, be careful what Bing spits out. This is not always exactly what you want.
“Don’t wait for the next great novel or poem,” PCW’s Mark Khachman warned. “The Bing copy is usable, which is what you would expect from a copywriter or student…Professional writers probably have nothing to worry about.”
However, what Bing produces will be simple and “mostly accurate”. Best of all, it only takes a few seconds to create content. With some editing, a user could probably create a single website page or essay in a few hours or less.
Copilot can also create workable cover letters and other correspondence that is easy to edit but difficult to write. Having Bing suggest a list of ideas is also a great way to overcome writer’s block.