Copilot is getting more personality with a ‘real talk’ mode and group chats

Microsoft is rolling out some significant changes to its Copilot AI assistant today. There’s a new groups feature that connects multiple people into a Copilot chat, memory to let Copilot learn things about you, a new “real talk” mode that will bring back some of Copilot’s early personality, and more.

Copilot Groups is designed for groups of friends, classmates, and even teammates to use Copilot in a single session. Microsoft is targeting this at people who need to make a plan or solve problems together, and the company is supporting up to 32 people in Copilot Groups, in an effort to make AI more social.

“My guess is you’re going to see groups of two or three dominate this,” says Jacob Andreou, CVP of product and growth at Microsoft AI, in an interview with The Verge. “I think it’s actually going to be a lot of small groups, it’s not going to be like your long-running group chat suddenly has an AI in it.”

While Copilot Groups sounds like it’s more ideally suited to work environments, it’s only launching inside the US consumer version of Copilot today and not the business-focused Microsoft 365 Copilot. That might change in the future, though. “I do think it’s going to be amazing in work contexts,” says Andreou. “Bringing experiences like this into Microsoft 365 are going to be really important.”

Microsoft is also adding an optional “real talk” mode to Copilot that will adapt to the way you’re asking questions and have more challenging responses. When Microsoft first launched Copilot as its Bing AI chatbot, it could often be prompted to refer to itself as Sydney and sometimes respond rudely to users. While the real talk mode doesn’t bring back the full sassiness of Sydney, it sounds like Copilot is about to get a lot more personality in its responses.

“In real talk this mode will match your tone, add its own perspective, and maybe be a little more witty than people expect,” says Andreou. “It’s also going to challenge you, so it won’t just agree with everything you say.” Real talk won’t be the default mode, it will just be another mode you select in the dropdown menu, and it’s also only limited to text and not Copilot’s voice mode.

Real talk will be able to take advantage of improvements to Copilot’s memory features, though. “Copilot is getting way better memory. It will be able to remember facts about you, the people you care about, your life, and the things you’re working on,” explains Andreou.

You’ll also be able to control what Copilot knows about you. “You’ll be able to see a list of everything Copilot knows about you, and you’ll be able to go in and delete things,” says Andreou. “We also really want to invest is doing a lot of this conversationally.” You’ll be able to use the Copilot voice mode to ask the AI assistant to forget everything it knows about your partner, for example.

Copilot is also getting changes to how it answers health-related questions by improving how it sources and grounds responses with trusted sources like Harvard Health. “Copilot also helps you find the right doctors quickly and confidently, matching based on location, language, and other preferences,” says Microsoft.

Microsoft is also updating its Copilot voice mode to introduce Mico, a new Clippy-like character. It will react with real-time expressions and bounce around a Copilot window. It also has a Learn Live mode that acts like a tutor. You can read all about Mico right here.