Meet Mico, Microsoft's AI Version of Clippy (www.theverge.com)

Microsoft has introduced Mico (rhymes with “pico”), a new virtual character for Copilot’s voice mode that’s being turned on by default in the US at launch (you can opt to disable the bouncing orb). Mico responds with real‑time facial expressions as you speak, leverages Copilot’s new memory feature to recall facts about you and your work, and includes a “Learn Live” Socratic tutor mode that uses interactive whiteboards and visual cues to guide learning rather than simply delivering answers. Microsoft positions Mico as the start of giving Copilot a persistent identity and presence—part of a broader push to get people to talk to their PCs after past attempts like Clippy and Cortana. For the AI/ML community the announcement signals more investment in low‑latency, multimodal UX and personalized memory systems that must balance usefulness with privacy and safety. Real‑time expressive rendering implies fast inference and tight synchronization between voice, animation and context retrieval; Learn Live suggests on‑device or cloud orchestration of dialogue flows, visual generation, and tutoring heuristics. Adoption remains an open question—historical resistance to voice assistants persists—but Mico also shows how persona, memory and multimodal tutoring are being combined into mainstream products, raising technical and ethical questions around long‑term personalization, data retention, and user trust.