Copilot is getting a face, a room — and a place in your life

OpenAI’s ChatGPT may be crushing Microsoft Copilot, but Microsoft has a plan. And Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, offered up some clues about that plan on a podcast last week. He said OpenAI is interested in “superintelligence and AGI” — while Microsoft is interested in “craft and delight.”

Microsoft wants to create AI life companions, and Suleyman’s appearance on The Colin and Samir Show provided lots of details about what that could look like.

Suleyman’s plans aren’t just buzzwords, either. As I wrote last year, Microsoft wants you to start an AI friendship — and now more than ever, that strange-sounding ambition is starting to come to life.

Microsoft’s sci-fi vision

On the podcast, Suleyman said he’s been thinking a lot about AI consciousness lately. He also recently posted on X that AI would soon be able to “have” experiences rather than “imitate” experiences. That’s his mindset — and it reveals a lot about what might lie ahead for Copilot’s next phase.

Suleyman talks about how his vision of Copilot is something that has “a permanent identity — a presence — and it will have a room that it lives in.” Your Copilot will age, in other words, and get a sort of digital patina. Current chatbots seem to be responding from a sort of infinite space without any sense of age or time, and he feels that “the infinity” is an alien concept that puts people off.

He said your AI will be a “continuous observer and participant in creating new culture alongside you” and “it’s going to have a lasting, stable presence with memory.”

Moreover, Copilot is “designed to be your life coach, your productivity assistant, and your teacher wrapped up in one.” It will follow you through your life, remember stuff for you, bring things to you, and chat with you about them.

Also, Copilot will “interweave fiction in your real life.” Suleyman provided the example of uploading a video of a camping trip and then being able to see “what would have happened if a bear attacked.” (That sounds potentially gruesome — but it was his example!)

And maybe we’ll all even be talking to each other’s Copilots? That’s his prediction:  “Very soon, my AI will join this conversation, right? My Copilot has its own name, has a visual appearance, it will be coming and sitting here and chatting away with us.”

Lest you think this is all off-the-cuff chit-chat, Suleyman’s been working on this — and developing this very specific vision — for years.

Copilot’s chatbot predecessor

Suleyman is often introduced as the co-founder of DeepMind, which was acquired by Google, as well as the CEO of Microsoft AI today. But in the middle, he created something else — and it doesn’t get nearly as much attention as it should.

Suleyman founded a company called Inflection AI back in 2022. The startup created a Chatbot named Pi, named for “personal intelligence.” It was designed to focus on emotional intelligence — providing emotional support to users rather than just helping them dig through spreadsheets and search results for business data.

Suleyman joined Microsoft in 2024. Later that year, Copilot became an AI companion in an update that transformed how the consumer version worked, introducing voice chat and turning it into a more Pi-like experience that’s eager to talk about your day.

While Copilot hasn’t taken the world by storm yet, Microsoft is convinced it has a unique formula: a digital life companion with emotive facial expressions and memory that will pop right up and be friendly as soon as you press the Copilot key on one of those new Windows 11 laptops.

Copilot’s virtual face

The Copilot Appearance feature is already live for a handful of people. Microsoft calls it an “experiment” in its blog post, but Suleyman is clear that this is where Microsoft’s Copilot product design is going, one way or another.

As Microsoft puts it: “With this experiment, we are bringing more non-verbal communication to Copilot, enhancing voice conversations with real-time visual expression. This early prototype allows you to chat, brainstorm, seek advice, or just mess around with Copilot in a more engaging and expressive way.”

For now, Copilot appears as a floating, cloud-like blob. In the future, given the way Suleyman talks, I’d imagine the dream is being able to customize exactly how the face looks so that it’s your very own unique, chosen companion.

Copilot’s new “Appearance” feature adds animations and facial expressions during voice chats.Microsoft

Microsoft’s Copilot branding mess

Unfortunately, Microsoft’s plan isn’t exactly immaculate. Copilot’s consumer branding, in particular, is a complete mess: With the relaunch of the consumer version of Copilot as an AI buddy back in 2024, the enterprise Copilot for Microsoft 365 and consumer Copilot diverged into two very different products with two very different purposes. And yet, they continue to share the same name.

So far, people seem happy to use the same AI tools — mostly ChatGPT — at work and at home. If Microsoft is right, though, some workers might eventually want a different AI tool that isn’t all about business once they head home for the day. If that’s true and people use Copilot for Microsoft 365 at work, they probably won’t want to load the consumer Copilot with its same name and same icon in their off hours.

If you use Word, Excel, and other Microsoft productivity services, the Copilot icon will load a productivity assistant. Will Copilot in Excel remember you talked about problems in your personal life when you’re doing your taxes? If so, professionals presumably wouldn’t be thrilled with that. And if not — well, then why are they both called Copilot?

Microsoft should have named this personalized companion experience something else — not Copilot — to distinguish it from all the business tools that share the Copilot name. It’s another strange decision from the company that slapped the name “Bing” on its first big AI release.

Will Copilot be on your side — or on Microsoft’s?

Suleyman says Copilot will be the companion that’s on your side. But consider other Microsoft products. Windows 11 is packed with advertising and behavioral nudges to use Microsoft’s services. The Start menu always uses Bing and Edge even if you prefer another search engine and browser — and that’s just one example. With these examples in mind, I anticipate Copilot will be on Microsoft’s side first and foremost.

On the podcast, Suleyman noted how Facebook had “created new behavioral mechanics.” While he said people would also be interested in other humans, he also shared his vision of Copilot being your new viral feed: “Your AI is going to be producing a feed of engaging, exciting, challenging content that is just kind of optimized to what you’re interested in.”

Remember: That AI-generated feed will come from the same company that gave us the viral content feeds on Edge’s New Tab page.

It’s all a little unsettling — this idea that an AI will be feeding you optimized content, that it will age in front of you like a Tamagotchi, and that by cancelling a subscription you may be saying goodbye to something that acts like a friend.

Lots of services online show you teary-eyed images and talk about how sad they are to see you go when you cancel a subscription. Will your Copilot, in its little room, sob if you start canceling your subscription? Will it excitedly bring you advertising — after all, ads are increasingly being inserted into AI assistants — along with pushes toward paid upgrades for new features?

Do you really want an “emotionally intelligent” AI buddy controlled by Microsoft’s corporate headquarters?

Last but not least, Suleyman mentioned how he hated his desktop, saying it looks like an ugly billboard. Is it more likely that Microsoft will transform overnight and stop treating Windows like a billboard — or that Microsoft’s AI experiences will become billboards, too?

We’ll see. But, if we’ll all have AI buddies in the future, Microsoft isn’t going to be the only game in town. I’ll happily use Copilot in Excel to get work done, but I don’t think I want a Microsoft-branded friend following me all throughout my life.