In Redmond, they are in a rush to introduce AI into our lives. Microsoft almost looks like a startup: Does not stop the launch of products and services that take advantage of ChatGPT’s appeal. It incorporates them into any solution and in doing so changes the way we interact with our computers.

For decades, operating systems and applications have proposed a mouse-and-keyboard-based interface, but at Microsoft they are changing that paradigm in subtle but remarkable ways: it now gives us the ability to chat with these operating systems and their applications. To chat with our computer.

To wait. This chatbot thing looks familiar to me

The idea is not entirely new, of course. Surely most of our readers will remember that a certain chatbot fever broke out a few years ago. Satya Nadella in 2016″bots will be new apps“.

In 2016, Microsoft relies on Cortana and its integration (pictured, on a Windows Phone) in all sorts of scenarios to help us out in different scenarios. He was a kind of Co-Pilot in an alpha state.

Relying 100% on Cortana, the company later offered its own development platform for conversation bots, but it wasn’t alone: ​​Facebook did the same in those days, while Telegram or WeChat allowed these automated accounts on its social networks to answer questions and respond to user requests.

The world was not ready for this revolution, but technology was not ready either. Microsoft then launched Tay, a conversation bot that feeds on conversations and then lets people use it on Twitter. The stunning and risky experiment was described as a disaster.. Tay became a racist bot and Holocaust denier in certain interactions. Microsoft shut it down two days later. Then he would do other experiments. At the time, some had described them as irritating, but it wouldn’t be strange for them to reappear, in our direction.

The irony of all this was that Tay suffered from the same kinds of “jailbreaks” that also affected ChatGPT or Bing – now not these. If someone manages to force their behavior, both models “hallucinate” and Tay hallucinates for the same reasons. Microsoft then opted to cancel the experiment: times have changed, we have been warned and almost overlooked these risks. After all, we’re the ones trying to turn ChatGPT from the dark side to DAN.

The truth is, the first generation of chatbots that came out in 2016 were truly a disaster. We tried 15 of the most popular on Xataka and one thing was clear to us: “They’re still a real disaster”. Limitations were evident in all of them, and the world forgot them as quickly as it praised them. To something else, the butterfly. At least until November 2022 OpenAI launched ChatGPT.

Microsoft wins because they had (almost) nothing to lose

Everything changed in that moment. This conversational AI model has become the fastest growing platform in the entire history of the Internet, and many companies are starting to bet on this technology. In the last six months, startups (and experts and so-called experts) have emerged in the field of artificial intelligence. even under the stonesbut above all, the two mega-corporations that dominated the market rose.

One is OpenAI, with a less commercial startup orientation, almost academic, but that has changed. The other, of course, is Microsoft, which has managed to take advantage of a fundamental advantage:

HE I had nothing to lose.

This was crucial to their success. Microsoft no longer dominates the world of technology as it used to. It missed the train of internet searches, social networks and mobile phones. The arrival of the concierge Satya Nadella managed to wake him from his drowsiness and this manager changed the message. It was no longer a Windows company, it was an AI and cloud company. He lost battles to win the war. Or at least one of the key battles he’s planning: the battle in the cloud.

But there was another. The artificial intelligence that Nadella talked about in 2018 was not the artificial intelligence we see revolutionizing the world right now. However, Nadella and his team managed to seize the moment like no other company in the world. Google seems to be knocked out -but far from defeated-, Apple is neither here nor expected, Amazon has chosen to be everyone’s friend, and Meta, confused by Zuck’s obsession with the meta-universe, reacts in an interesting way -LLaMA is a great example – its publications are now more academic than practical.

Having (almost) nothing to lose has been great for Microsoft, which can afford an extraordinary luxury for a large company. He took the risk. The distribution of ChatGPT in Microsoft products is an exception. In just five months since they announced their multi-million dollar investment with OpenAI, Microsoft has not stopped integrating ChatGPT everywhere.

flight co-pilots

We just saw it in the days of the Microsoft BUILD 2023 event. We saw how the company did not stand still at these conferences for developers. launch their “co-pilots” (Co-pilot) for any service.

They started doing this in 2021 with GitHub Copilot, the platform that helps programming thanks to the still little-known but outstanding GPT-3. This assistant was an absolute success, and in just 18 months, that programmer AI was responsible for 40% of the Python and Java code that made it to GitHub.

But GitHub Copilot was just the beginning, because we now have its supervitamin evolution (GitHub Copilot X) and many job co-pilot: Dynamics 365 Copilot and Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot in Microsoft Viva, Microsoft Security Copilot, Copilot in Power BI, Copilot in Power Pages, Copilot in Microsoft Fabric.

Added to them all are two very special ones that we really want to try at Xataka. First, the aforementioned GitHub Copilot X integration into the already great Windows Terminal: it will suggest commands, explain what happens when an error message appears, and be able to perform certain actions within the terminal.

Second, much more importantly, is Windows Copilot, the chatbot built into the Windows 11 operating system. it will literally allow us to chat with our computer. “How do I turn on dark mode in Windows?” We can say things like, but this will integrate the full potential of Bing Chat into the operating system.

Get used to this icon. You will probably see him a lot from now on.

In fact, we will not only help resolve any possible doubts or problems with our team, but also set up a diet or plan a three-day getaway to Soria. This integration works in two different ways: we can run Windows Copilot from the taskbar and its new icon, but it will also be fully integrated with Edge: If we are visiting a web page, we can launch this co-pilot based on Bing Chat, asking questions about the information displayed on that page. to answer.

We insist that Microsoft’s purpose is for us to chat non-stop with our computer. The mouse is still a core part of the experience, but now the keyboard takes on special significance and we’ll definitely be typing more than ever before.

should be considered If this frenzied launch of co-pilots makes any sense. Unless it’s a marketing ploy where everything sounds and smells like artificial intelligence anymore. If Microsoft won’t take advantage of attracting and killing flies with cannonballs.

The impression that these first products give is that there might be something to it. Still, Windows Copilot offers a valid solution to an existing problem. My mom, for example, probably couldn’t figure out on her own how to turn on dark mode in Windows 11. Ability to ask Windows Copilot how to do this so that the wizard guides you step-by-step makes sense, at least for me. And it saves me from having to call and say “sorry, I’m always calling you for these jobs” in order to be able to call me for other things away from technological questions.

I don’t know. Microsoft may be hitting the target with this paradigm. One with which we will no longer manage our computer so much: we will talk to it.

First, with the keyboard.

Then maybe sound.