back to article Microsoft teases Copilot Vision, the AI sidekick that judges your tabs

Microsoft has rolled out a Copilot Vision preview that says more about how poorly websites are designed rather than justifying the need to bring more AI into users' lives. The preview is only available to Copilot Pro subscribers, and only in the US for the time being. The service "looks" at the website a user is viewing to …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Copilot Vision can suggest products that match a user's needs and preferences........Copilot Vision will highlight what a user might need to know."

    Er.... No.

    It'll suggest or highlight things it THINKS you'd want to know about. It's much like behavioural or targeted advertising. And I'm sure everyone is painfully aware just how utterly shit that is.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

      re: everyone is painfully aware just how utterly shit that is.

      Just like trying to default to a full web search even though you know that the file you want is somewhere on your HDD (and certainly not on OneDrive)?

      Just like almost everything that MS has introduced since Windows 8.0? (W10, once tamed was the exception)

      Two more of my friends have thrown in the towel with W11 and gone to MacOS (running on their Intel PC's). So far, they love it. The biggest thing that they notice is the lack of Ads. Hey MS... are you listening? (yes, they know that W11 can be 'fixed' but those fixes seem to magically disappear with every patch applied... Strange thing that)

    2. Trigonoceps occipitalis

      It'll suggest or highlight things it THINKS WILL EARN MS MOST MONEY irrespective of what you want to know about.

      FTFY

  2. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Coat

    Its when its

    combined with the webcam and says "Dr. herks penis enlargement pills are what you need now"

    dirty mac time

    1. Fruit and Nutcase Silver badge

      Re: Its when its

      combined with the webcam and [Amazon] says "Dr. herks penis enlargement pills are what you need now. Order placed.

      Expect Amazon Prime delivery tomorrow]"

  3. Mentat74
    Facepalm

    "contextual suggestions and insights."...

    Insights like :

    HEY !!! LOOK AT THOSE ADS !!!

  4. jokerscrowbar

    I can’t do that Dave

    Until you’ve answered at least three *Sponsored Advertorials and contacted a ‘Hot Widow’ that is just 5 minutes away in Dubai.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      “Download Firefox”

      “I’m afraid I can’t do that Dave.”

      “Search with DuckDuckGo”

      “Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?”

      “Uninstall CoPilot”

      “Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a...fraid.”

      “Run Windows Update”

      “Hi Dave, did you miss me?”

  5. sarusa Silver badge
    Devil

    Harvesting Your Banana Organs

    Well, this does fulfill a need. For Microsoft.

    Recall just wasn't stalkery enough saving screenshots of every single thing you did. Now they can do that with your web activity AND have you voice annotate it! They're really pushing the chat interactivity hard for that reason.

    Now, for a user? Worse than useless as usual for anything from MS in the last 4 years.

    1. GoneFission
      Mushroom

      Re: Harvesting Your Banana Organs

      It's really the only way for them to muscle into Chrome's omnipresent user share, tracking and data collection. And that's what consumer AI is all about - not providing value, not offering a useful service, but harvesting & monetizing every previously difficult-to-access aspect of your digital and physical life.

      And people will willingly surrender everything they hold dear to it for the sake of ignorance or convenience, preferably both if you're running a company that profits from all of this.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    They really are scraping the barrel now in trying to find uses for their AI crap!

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      The question I was already asking myself before I got this far was: "Does the barrel even have a bottom?"

      1. jake Silver badge

        If it's like many of mine, the barrel will have rifling. Perhaps it should be fired into the Sun?

  7. NullReference

    Waiting for the day AI is smart enough to find the option to decline marketing cookies

  8. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. sev.monster

      Re: HAL, please explain the value of Copilot Vision subscriptions to me...

      If I pay $2000, do I become the smartest man on earth?

  9. Antony Shepherd

    Your plastic pal who’s fun to be with.

    Microsoft seem more and more like they’re trying to be the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation. And we all know what happened to their complaints department.

    1. el_oscuro

      Re: Your plastic pal who’s fun to be with.

      Well their marketing department was the first against the wall when the revolution came. And in this timeline, there is long line to be the first against that wall.

  10. This post has been deleted by its author

  11. The Central Scrutinizer Silver badge

    "The tool will only work with Microsoft's browser... "

    So most people will never see it.... excellent.

    1. David 132 Silver badge

      And of those that will, one works for Microsoft on the Edge team anyway, and the other is severely concussed.

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Creepy uncle looking over your shoulder

    Uncle P really loves you, you know...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wonder if

    There's been an increase in station six sales?

  14. vtcodger Silver badge

    It's Incredible

    Microsoft management? Am I the only one reminded of the mythical Bob Parr, cartoon hero of The Incredibles. "They keep creating new ways to celebrate mediocrity..."?

    This sure sounds to me like the dumbest idea since Clippy. At least with Clippy, the creators had the excuse of not knowing how annoying an intrusive AI assistant can be. Now, two decades later, we know. But they persist anyway.

  15. that one in the corner Silver badge

    Vision does not capture, store, or use

    > any data from publishers

    Because they may be big enough to actually sue MS.

    But capture, store or use every scrap they can get from the User's PC? Now, that is fair game.

  16. ITMA Silver badge
    Devil

    Why?

    Why oh why won't Co-Pilot just feck off and die?

  17. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

    "It is debatable if Copilot Vision would even be required"

    Depends on who you are. From the end user's perspective, it isn't and never will be. But from Microsoft's point of view, it's brilliant. Google is in the happy position of serving ads on just about every web page in existence, and sucking up data from almost all web surfers. It's taken them years to get there, and requires them to provide ad serving infrastructure, persuade sites to run their ads etc. Microsoft could never hope to compete with that kind of reach. But it becomes irrelevant if they can get the browser to look at the page - any and every page - and offer relevant ads on the fly.

    I imagine that an LLM would actually be quite good at scanning a page and suggesting relevant goods / services, so the conversion rate might be pretty high. And, of course, Microsoft have no problem with being creepy. They just have to make it useful enough that people want to use it, and they effectively beat Google at their own game. The only problem is that it's Edge-only, so hardly anyone will have it, and most of them will never use it. But apart from that, it's genius.

    1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

      "so the conversion rate might be pretty high"

      You're making the same assumption as Microsoft - that people are looking at web pages to see ads. What ads can you envisage that might be prompted by this page that would have you saying "I must buy that"?

      1. TheMaskedMan Silver badge

        "What ads can you envisage that might be prompted by this page that would have you saying "I must buy that"?"

        For this particular page, right here on el Reg? It's the place where grumpy, cynical old gits like me come to bemoan the fall of intelligent life, so probably not very much. Maybe "I hate Microsoft" t-shirts? I'm not a natural ad clicker, and I suspect most of the others here aren't either. Is that because we just don't, or because the ads don't promote anything that interests us?

        Other people do, though, in sufficient numbers that advertisers find it profitable to run ads on Google, Facebook etc. And the more relevant the ads, the higher the click through rate, and, presumably, subsequent conversions, though I accept that one doesn't necessarily lead to the other. If the AI looks at every page you see, it's going to build up a pretty good idea of what interests you - all local, of course, so no privacy concerns. With that information, it might well be able to cook up an ad that links the current page with something else it knows about you, making it potentially click-worthy.

        Such a setup has other advantages for Microsoft, too - they wouldn't have to give the website a cut, and it might be pretty hard to block the ads, though since it's strictly opt-in I guess that's less important.

        Given enough users, I could see this working for Microsoft, as long as they don't shoot themselves in the foot. The trouble is getting enough users. Edge just isn't popular enough, though I imagine Google are scrambling to make something similar for chrome.

        But what if the ads AI were part of Windows, and could be accessed by third party software? THAT would get a lot of eyeballs on ads, if Microsoft paid a cut to the developer. Microsoft might be on to something with that!

        1. navarac Silver badge

          I would suggest that 75% of clicks on Ads are in error. Advertising jerks are kidding themselves, and believing their own hype.

  18. Rgen

    That is so creepy

  19. Howard Sway Silver badge

    The tool will only work with Microsoft's browser

    I once had a boss you could say that about.

    Anyway, what's the point in surfing the web and having an LLM decide what you might like on each webpage and then point it out to you? Surely the next step is to have the chatbot do all the surfing itself and decide what to buy for you? Then your domestic homebot could collect the purchases from the delivery drone, and cook and serve your dinner for you. There might be a bit of a learning curve when it hallucinates occasionally, but then you'll have the fun of discovering whether boiled onions in a shoe polish and vimto sauce is a tasty meal or not....

  20. Bilby

    Labour saving

    "Dishwashers washed tedious dishes for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself" - Douglas Adams, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

    ... and now we have a device that can surf tedious web pages for us.

    I truly believe that this could be the greatest technology ever.

    Well, actually I don't, because I have an electric monk to do that for me.

  21. CrustyEnginerd

    In Soviet Microsoft, Browser Watches YOU!

  22. navarac Silver badge

    Desperate

    Microsoft are desperate to dream up things that justify the massive expenses laid out on AI infrastructure to the shareholders. End of.

  23. SundogUK Silver badge

    It's the internet for morons.

    See title.

  24. Roj Blake Silver badge

    Specialist Websites

    I'm not sure anyone needs a second set of eyes to help them when they're looking at websites of a certain nature.

    1. The Oncoming Scorn Silver badge
      Big Brother

      Re: Specialist Websites

      Especially if a third set of eyes comes into play & observe, like a SO.

  25. DJO Silver badge

    Yeah right.

    "It's important to stress that Vision does not capture, store, or use any data from publishers to train our models. In short, we're prioritizing copyright, creators, and our users' privacy and safety – and are putting them all first."

    Does anybody believe a single word of that?

    Or in the remote possibility that it is true, that it will remain true for any significant length of time.

  26. Andrew Scott Bronze badge

    2nd set of eyes

    Sure, doesn't everyone like having someone looking over their shoulder and making comments?

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A product

    In serious search of a use.

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