“Good or bad, what matters is that they’re talking about me,” is apparently the dynamic she’s immersed in. Windows 11 practically since its launch. The most recent controversy leads Fr Windows Copilot, an AI assistant that claims to help “get answers and inspiration from around the web, foster creativity and collaboration, and help you focus on the task at hand.” It is present in the preview update released at the end of September 2023, and Microsoft is going to release it as part of the October 2023 cumulative update for Windows 22H2.

The reason Windows Copilot has been in the news is that started showing third-party ads. Here we witness another episode in which Microsoft’s system is gradually adopting things that previously seemed exclusive to Android, with a model that it intends to make money with beyond the mere sale of copies and activation keys of its operating system.

In the case exposed by Ghacks, it can be seen that Windows Copilot only displayed ads for laptops, but who knows what the user will end up viewing depending on the websites visited and even the applications used, especially when Malwarebytes warned about malicious advertising. served through Bing’s AI-powered chatbot.

Users can work with Windows Copilot by clicking on the corresponding icon located on the taskbar, which Microsoft has placed in a prominent place next to the search box. You can also use the Windows+C hotkey to activate it. After opening, a narrow sidebar appears on the desktopwhich remains there as long as the Assistant is open or until a full-screen application such as a video game is launched.

Windows Copilot showing advertisement. Source: Ghacks.

Users who installed the pre-update (update preview) to see an advertisement when interacting with Windows Copilot, although fortunately not all actions performed with the assistant return advertisements as one of the responses, and what’s more, it requires a constant Internet connection to be fully functional.

Fortunately, Windows Copilot can be disabled by the user and Microsoft could have a big problem if such a feature could not be disabled, although enabling it by default will also attract criticism no matter how much the Redmond giant implements simple mechanisms to disable the assistant.

We’ll see what happens with digital assistants supported by artificial intelligence, which may eventually trigger a debate not only technological, but also moral and legal. Regarding aspects such as advertising, the European Union has enforced the Digital Markets Act, which aims to mandate interoperability between services and prevent certain unfair practices.

We remember that the latest episode of incidents caused by Windows 11 is the fact that the KB5030310 update causes the loss of custom settings in the AMD Adrenalin software, so users have to reset them every time the system starts.