Microsoft cautiously launched a Copilot Vision preview in the US
Microsoft has launched the Copilot Vision preview for a small set of US-based Pro subscribers. Copilot Vision is an AI-powered feature that provides insights based on the contents of Microsoft Edge screens while prioritizing user privacy and control.
This October, Microsoft announced a few features coming to Copilot as part of the assistant's latest update, which was about ushering in "a calmer, more helpful and supportive era of technology, quite unlike anything we’ve seen before." One of the more intriguing launches was Copilot Labs, an experimental playground for features not quite ready to be generally available like Vision, a feature to enable Copilot to see the contents of users' screens, and Think Deeper, Microsoft's take on giving Copilot more time to "think" before responding to a query.
Copilot Vision was not given a specific preview launch date in the October announcement, which merely stated the feature would be available soon. However, the official arrival of the Copilot Vision preview finally materialized on Thursday, when Microsoft confirmed practically everything it had shared about Vision in the October announcement. Copilot Vision will be initially available as a preview to a small group of Copilot Pro users in the US, and only in Microsoft Edge, where it can be summoned to provide insights on the contents of the browser window.
An additional limitation is that the experience is only available for select websites. The company provided no further details about which websites these are or how they were picked out, except that Vision will not work on paywalled sites or those featuring sensitive content. Reportedly, the first is due to an accusation from the New York Times which claims Microsoft Copilot on Bing enabled users to bypass the newspaper's paywall. The company claims there are news publishers among its current collaborators and that they are helping Microsoft better understand how people can best engage with their websites through Copilot. Microsoft also stressed it does not train its models using publishers' data.
Concerning security, Microsoft again stressed that Copilot Vision is an entirely opt-in feature and that any user data stored as part of a session is deleted immediately after the session ends. According to Microsoft, only Copilot responses are stored to improve the system's safety.
