Final 12 months, Microsoft showed off a pair of concept videos highlighting how “real-time conversations together with your AI companion copilot” would possibly at some point present personalised steerage and companionship whereas enjoying a solo recreation of Minecraft. Now, Microsoft is saying that it’ll roll out “Copilot for Gaming” as an “final gaming sidekick” that will likely be out there through cellular app preview for Xbox Insiders beginning in April.
Sadly, the present model of Microsoft’s gaming “copilot” appears to fall nicely in need of final 12 months’s demo, offering some bare-bones automation of features that may principally be achieved fairly simply immediately with out the help of AI. The brand new app feels much less like a revolutionary new use case for conversational AI and extra like a glorified, Xbox-branded model of Apple’s Siri.
Wait, is that it?
Watching a brief, livestreamed demo of the brand new Copilot for Gaming app, my reactions shortly shifted from “that is type of neat” to “wait, is that it?” That course of began from the very first second, when a participant requested, “I wish to get again into Age of Empires… Can you put in it?” Conversational set up prompts may very well be a bit extra handy than merely clicking the handful of buttons wanted to start out a recreation set up with out AI, however it’s not essentially the most thrilling use case to guide off with.