Copilot is getting a major upgrade and Microsoft is hoping Mico makes you forget you ever met a Clippy (www.techradar.com)

Microsoft is rolling out a major Copilot refresh across Windows, Edge and mobile (available Oct 23) that bundles a dozen free updates aimed at making the assistant more collaborative, personal and context-aware. Headline features include Groups — real‑time multiuser Copilot sessions where invited participants can co‑author prompts (chat history is scoped to the session and Copilot pauses personal memory when someone new joins) — and Journeys in Edge, which analyzes your browsing history to resume tasks and suggest next steps. The Copilot visual persona “Mico” adds an expressive, customizable face and mood‑matching cues, while a new optional “Real Talk” personality offers a more challenging, perspective‑driven conversational style. Microsoft also upgraded memory to retain user details for more natural interactions and redesigned the Copilot homepage to surface recent apps, files and conversations. Technical and product implications matter for developers and enterprises: Microsoft says Copilot still uses OpenAI frontier models in parts of its stack but will mix its own, partner and open‑source models as appropriate, keeping flexibility to pick the “best model for the job.” Health queries will be grounded in clinical sources (e.g., Harvard Health) and can surface nearby/in‑network clinicians if users opt to share insurance info. Edge’s Copilot Mode adds agentic local actions (email review, feed scanning) and background data pulls, which raises useful productivity gains but also new privacy and data‑management considerations for teams integrating Copilot into workflows.