Envisioning life with an AI assistant: is Copilot up to the task?

The following research has been compiled from the opinions of 1532 readers who completed our opt-in online survey over the course of 1 week. More then 50% of answers were recorded from the USA, Canada and UK, while the next most popular countries were India, Republic of South Africa, and Australia. Their unaltered answers are presented below.

Windows Copilot will dramatically impact how users interact on Windows 11, or that seems to be the general consent. But how much of that is true? To find out, we asked our readers about their take on Copilot, and their answers are interesting.

We already know that AI is on a huge up-trend. We also know that more and more people are integrating AI into their lives one way or another, but what impact will Microsoft’s Copilot integration with Windows 11 have? Because, at this point, people know about the coding side of the tool but not much else about its integration within the OS.

Panos Panay, Chief Product Officer of Microsoft, said that integrating Copilot in Windows 11 will transform how people will use the OS and add a lot of value and speed to daily task completion. If we base that statement on Microsoft 365 Copilot, the final result could be incredible.

But first, let’s see how people look at Copilot right now and what the expectations are regarding day-to-day usability.

72% of Windows users don’t know what Copilot is or does

Yes, that’s right, almost three-quarters of the respondents don’t know anything about Copilot. That is a huge number, especially considering the marketing behind it and its integrations with other Microsoft products.

So far it’s a ULTRA poor marketing job. There should be Microsoft videos on youtube showing what fantastic things it can do an how it can improve a persons life.

Anonymous respondent

Microsoft 365 Copilot is out for some time now, with broader availability expected at the introduction of Windows 11 23H2, and this seems also to be the main thing Windows users know about Copilot, as 15% of them are aware of its integration with Office 365.

The last important percentage to take into account is 4%. That’s the number of people using it right now through the Windows Insider Program. This means that, alongside the other 5% that know about Copilot’s features, the total percentage of users ready for the integration is close to 10%, which is great news for Microsoft, especially now in the pre-release stage.

Copilot’s features will be the main selling point for half of Windows users

When it comes to usability, the trend doesn’t change. Only 14% of users believe that the introduction of Copilot in Windows 11 will completely change how they interact with their PC, while almost half of the pollees are not sure yet and waiting to base their decision on the live features.

In other words, Copilot’s features will directly impact its success. That’s mainly because AI is not enough anymore; having an AI assistant at your fingertips should mean more than just a novelty. Productivity will play one of the biggest roles in Copilot’s integration, besides task management and information access. That’s also strongly confirmed by users:

I would love to see an integration with an voice enabled assistant that can work in an integrated way with calendaring, emails, and to-do’s. In another word a truly all around personal assistant, ideally eventually including physical world devices like Alexa can do.

Anonymous respondent

How will you use Copilot? For many, search & email writing are a priority

Working with any AI opens a new world of possibilities. While the product itself has a set of limitations and boundaries, the use scenarios are only limited by the user’s imagination. For almost half of the respondents, Copilot’s main use remains searching for things or writing emails.

But that’s only half of the story, as 25% plan to use it as a full-blown assistant. Organizing and automating tasks could prove to be a hugely impactful side of Copilot, making it much more valuable than Cortana. Here’s what one user said:

I haven’t tried it, so I can’t say that I “know” what are it’s current capabilities. But, I would like it to be able to automate more tasks based on each specific user needs. It’s a tough nut to crack.

Anonymous respondent

This is also a reason for Microsoft to constantly improve Copilot and integrate it with as many of its products as possible.

I hope the features will reflect the name: having a real copilot that practically helps me in my daily tasks.

Anonymous respondent

Fancy a Copilot on your Surface device that updates your photo library whenever you connect any storage to it? Or maybe automatically changes your work and home profiles in browsers and other apps based on your location?

Copilot takes Windows 11 to the next level, 24% of users say

Windows Copilot might be Microsoft’s biggest success until now, but only for a quarter of respondents who would be willing to upgrade or migrate to Windows 11 just for this feature.

33% are not interested in it, and 43% are still on the fence. Again, its features and how people can take advantage of them will make or break this product. Nevertheless, the numbers indicate a big interest in its usability.

We already see integrations with Office 365, Outlook, and Microsoft Teams, which is a good sign for the overall experience. However, ensuring that Copilot will also play a role in personal use is detrimental.

Based on the data we have at this moment, we suspect that Windows 11 will see a pretty hefty market share increase once Copilot will be up and running for everybody.

Speed & convenience are the most sought improvements

The current version of Copilot offers some interesting features, but we at WindowsReport, are always focused on the needs of our readers. That’s why we’ve asked for valuable feedback and insights about Copilot’s future, and here are some of the answers:

The ability for the end user to not only hide it, but to totally disable it and turn it off.

Anonymous respondent

Confidentiality must be key to Copilot and I have also heard of failures to the software which need to be fixed before everyone starts using it.

Anonymous respondent

There’s a strong focus on privacy and security when it comes to Copilot. Not only that, but its integration with Windows opens a new path for troubleshooting errors and bugs, as shared by the users below:

i would like to see less diagnostic scans being performed. This will greatly improve the end users speeds and experiences. Happy customers create long-term customers.

Anonymous respondent

Eliminating searches for error codes would be awesome. Half the time even if you find answers to your questions on the web, you’re pretty damn sure you can’t trust them […] I would also appreciate if someone could dial back the “documentation” by about 4 graduate degrees… No offense, but like 1,000 pages on how to install powershell is a little too in depth, even for me. […] And if that’s not frustrating enough, when you lose all your data, you can lose a whole hell of a lot. […] So yes, a co-pilot would be greatly appreciated.

Anonymous respondent

Finally, here are a few cherry-picked ideas from our surveyors on how to improve Windows Copilot:

• Provide advanced research options and autosave the documents for future use in any case of emergency
• Should be able to search the entire hard disk for a file in less than 10 mins
• To find missing software directly and not through 3rd parties
• Improve my security and keep Google from tracking me and depositing trackers or ANYTHING on my computer
• It would be great if we could create or generate videos

What do you think? We’d love to hear your take on this and other topics you’d like us to cover in our following exclusive surveys. Share your thoughts right here, and we’ll check them out!

About the data

The research above was constructed based on the input of our readers through an online survey that ran for 7 days on WindowsReport.com. Using Crowdsignal, a popular survey tool, we have gathered 1532 complete answers to all of our questions.

We’ve received answers from 117 countries, but the most popular locations were:

• United States of America – 36%
• India – 15%
• United Kingdom – 10%
• Canada – 5%
• Republic of South Africa – 4%
• Australia – 3%

When it comes to platform distribution, readers that have completed this survey are mainly using Windows 11 (47%) and Windows 10 (41%). We’ve also recorded answers from people that are using Windows 7, macOS, iPadOS, Linux, or Chrome OS.

The raw-data used in the research above can be seen and downloaded here.