Microsoft announced Copilot for Windows 10 released. The generative AI assistant will arrive in Home and Pro editions of version 22H2 in the upcoming update, after corresponding testing by Insiders in preview versions.

We told you in advance. Making a virtue out of necessity, Microsoft change Windows 10 non-promotion policy add market share to Windows 11. And he’s not willing to lose the estimated 1,000 million PCs running Windows 10 to promote the assistant he’s invested millions in at OpenAI, the company whose technology it uses.

Although of course the official speech for this change says so “Received excellent feedback about Copilot on Windows 11” and now society has decided to do so “further investment to ensure everyone can get the most out of their Windows PC”the reality is that in a full battle to lead the deployment of artificial intelligence technology applications at the end customerMicrosoft wants to incentivize third-party developers to work on add-ons and apps for Copilot and not for competitors like ChatGPT or Google’s Bard.

And one billion new computers is not a small number, as you can understand. Even if it’s for Windows 10, a version that – as Microsoft has announced – won’t receive a feature update until the end of its life in October 2025. Hair to the sea…

Copilot in Windows 10 as well as Windows 11

The way the assistant works in Windows 10 will be similar to what we know from Windows 11. Microsoft will add a Copilot button directly to the main panel, which will open exactly same sidebar experience. The AI ​​tool will be able to work with many applications that also work on Windows 10, from the Bing search engine to the Edge browser, and the rest of the internal and external applications, such as those that come from Office, Teams. , Word, Outlook or Excel.

Copilot for Windows 10 starts in “Incremental release via Controlled Feature Rollout (CFR) in the coming months”specify from Microsoft. And it is mandatory not to rush. The wizard will implement changes throughout the operating system, and if you know the history of Windows update failures, it’s better to be sure.

In its initial edition of the guide It will only come in Consumer, Home and Pro editionsand not to the corporate versions (managed Pro or Enterprise) and not to the educational system versions. Additionally, it will be released in a preview phase for Insiders to test before it hits the stable channel.

Testers can prepare their system for the arrival of Copilot by installing the November 2023 non-security update (KB5032278) and enabling the “Get the latest updates when available” option in Settings > Update & security > Windows Update.

Few expected Microsoft to bring a new feature that could potentially benefit machines still running Windows 10, but it can’t afford to lose millions of users who don’t want to upgrade to Windows 11. A question of numbers… With Windows 12 just around the corner.