Getting Technical with Mashable Look Up Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable Selects Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Say More Versus Trending Now In My Bag Mashable @Home Top creators, ranked Creator Playbook All Series AI is becoming a major part of our digital lives, and Microsoft has adopted the new tech with open arms. So much so that Microsoft now offers a huge range of AI tools straight from Windows 11, led by Microsoft's new digital assistant, Copilot . The real advantage of AI is that it can help you do your work faster. AI tools, at least right now, are excellent at helping users save time, so they can spend that time on other tasks. And, many more AI tools that can help you save time are on the way - so expect to be able to save more and more time over the next few months and years.

The Dell Laptop Buying Guide UK: Which Dell Laptop Should You Buy? When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Windows Search is becoming your PC's new AI-powered control center Think of Windows Search as a chatbot within Windows, even more than Microsoft Copilot. For years -- decades, really -- the entry point inside Windows has been the Start menu. But from what Microsoft showed as part of its AI vision for Windows 11 this week, Start might be on its way out.

Less than a year after it promised to remove unnecessary Copilot integration from Windows 11, Microsoft announced today that it plans to turn part of the operating system's Task Bar into a sort of chatbot. Starting this fall, the Search Menu will allow you to carry out thousands of different actions across Windows just by typing short commands into its interface. During the company's fall Surface event, Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft's executive vice president of Windows and Devices, demoed how the new Search experience can quickly turn on and off settings like dark mode and do not disturb. He also demoed how the redesigned menu allows users to converse with the new Copilot app, without launching the software separately. If you want to continue the conversation, you can jump directly into the app.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Instead of paying $99.99 for Microsoft 365, get the same subscription for $69.99 right here Get a year of Microsoft 365 Personal with Copilot and 1TB of cloud storage for $69.99 (reg. Microsoft 365 is one of the best ways to get the core Microsoft productivity apps like Word and Excel, but the $99.99 yearly price tag is a hard lift. If you want a cheaper option, right now you can get a Microsoft 365 Personal 1-Year Subscription on sale for $69.99, and it even includes Copilot AI. Copilot is the newest addition to the Microsoft 365 suite.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Microsoft promised a better Windows 11. Microsoft has delivered the Windows 11 26H2 Update to the masses. We issue a report card on how it's lived up to its promises. This was supposed to be the year Microsoft fixed Windows 11.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. I unleashed AI on the Excel World Championship. If I can use AI like Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT to solve the hardest problems at the Spreadsheet Super Bowl, does it still mean anything? At around the same time that a humanoid robot broke Usain Bolt's record for the 100 meters, I was pushing the button to make people like Diarmuid Early irrelevant. Early, the winner of the Microsoft Excel World Championship 2025 competition, used brains, not brawn, to defeat two dozen other finalists in Las Vegas last December for just a few thousand dollars, plus bragging rights.

A complex privacy policy that handles EU users separately (for GDPR purposes), potentially shares user data with corporate, commercial, and research partners, but has a privacy-friendly app.

Microsoft introduced Mico in October 2025 to give an anthropomorphized face to voice conversations with its Copilot AI chatbot. It seems the poor little blob is already getting demoted after less than a year. The company has decided to remove Mico from the voice section of Copilot. Its new home will be the Learn Live hub, where it will continue to be a "tutor" for users. "Mico helped us learn about warmth, expressiveness, and how people want to talk with AI. Those learnings are shaping Copilot going forward," the support page for the blob reads.

Safety Net Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Look Up Creator Hub Versus Say More Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable Selects Switch Off Trending Now In My Bag VidCon with Mashable All Series Microsoft ditches Copilot's mascot Mico (and cuts a few AI features) Copilot's consumer and business apps are merging, resulting in these changes. Microsoft is merging its consumer and business Copilot apps. With the changes, come the loss of some AI tools and Copilot's own animated mascot. Say goodbye to Mico and a handful of AI tools, Microsoft Copilot users. According to new Microsoft support documents, the tech giant is making major changes to its AI assistant, Copilot.

PCWorld reports that Microsoft's new Copilot'PC Insights' feature in Windows 11 allows users to ask direct questions about their hardware performance and system status. The experimental tool analyzes CPU, memory, storage, and graphics components while Microsoft assures that personal files aren't stored or used for AI training. This opt-in diagnostic feature requires user permission and provides hardware insights, though it doesn't automatically fix performance issues and may have incomplete information. Microsoft has begun testing a new "PC Insights" feature in Copilot for Windows 11 that helps users analyze their computer's performance and answer questions about the system's status, reports Windows Latest . With the user's permission, Copilot can now analyze CPU and memory usage, available storage space, graphics card details, connected USB devices, network status, battery health, and BIOS version. The idea is that users will be able to ask direct questions about their hardware, to which Copilot can respond based on the computer's actual current status.