Microsoft bakes its Bing/ChatGPT bot into Windows 11

Microsoft is building its ChatGPT-based Bing experience right into Windows 11 — and adding a few twists that allow users to ask the chatbot to change their Windows settings, too.

The new Windows Copilot, which will be available right in the Windows 11 taskbar, is meant to make it easier for Windows users to find and change settings without having to delve deep into the Windows settings (think, “adjust my settings so I can focus”). But the tools will also allow users to summarize content from the clipboard, for example, or compose text.

The Copilot will also be a gateway to the existing Bing/ChatGPT experience. “Just like you would with Bing Chat, you can ask Windows Copilot a range of questions from simple to complex,” Microsoft’s Chief Product Officer Panos Panay explains in today’s blog post. “If I want to call my family in Cyprus, I can quickly check the local time to make sure I’m not waking them up in the middle of the night. If I want to plan a trip to visit them in Cyprus, I can ask Windows Copilot to find my family flights and accommodations for mid-winter break.”

This new Bing integration into Windows 11 will become available in June. Now, if all of this sounds familiar, that may be because shortly after launching the new Bing, Microsoft also said that it would bring the new Bing to the Windows 11 taskbar. But that’s not really what the company did. It merely linked to the Bing web experience from the taskbar. Now, Windows 11 is putting all of this into a taskbar that is quite similar to the Bing sidebar in the Edge browser.

I don’t know if this will convince any Windows 10 holdouts to update to Windows 11, but it will definitely put Bing front and center for the roughly 20% of Windows users who have made the switch.