Microsoft is making changes to Copilot that will allow the artificial intelligence assistant to complete online tasks for you. Using “simple chat prompts,” these “Actions” can be performed in the background while you work on other tasks, according to Microsoft, and can do things like book restaurant reservations, event tickets, and purchase items to ship to your friends.
Launch partners include Booking.com, Expedia, Kayak, Tripadvisor, Skyscanner, Viater, Vrbo, and Priceline — a host of travel and vacation-focused services that will allow Copilot to help users plan any upcoming trips — alongside Open Table for meals, and 1-800-Flowers.com for buying floral arrangements. Microsoft says that Copilot’s Actions feature will “work with most websites across the web,” and can sort out “the ride home” for you after events, suggesting it will also support taxi or ride-sharing services.
Actions is launching alongside other personalization features like a tool that turns online content into AI-generated podcasts, another for buying and finding deals on products, and the ability for Copilot to see and react to things on your camera. Microsoft hasn’t gone into any detail about how Actions will work, but it’s a similar concept to features that have already been announced by other AI providers.
Those similar solutions are largely still in development or early access, however. By contrast, Microsoft says it’s rolling out the initial version of Copilot’s Actions feature starting today, with availability expanding “in the coming weeks and months” subject to platform, market, and language. That makes it one of the first automatic task-performing AI services to hit the general public, and could give us an early indication of how practical or reliable these types of AI partner tools are to use.
