Microsoft is rolling out an upgrade to its Copilot chatbot this month that will allow it to do more both within Windows and in third-party apps such as Kayak and OpenTable.

Copilot has been a bit lacking in practical functionality since it launched in late 2023, as it could do little more than generate text and images, search the Internet and answer questions, and help with certain operations in Windows 11.

Starting today, however, Copilot is going to become a little more useful, as Microsoft is rolling out several upgrades over the next month that will bring new plug-ins and new skills to Copilot.

These plug-ins will allow Copilot to access third-party services like Kayak and Instacart. Unlike GPT, however, no subscription is required. Copilot users in the free tier will be able to use it as well.

This is a major difference from the OpenAI model, which requires a subscription to ChatGPT Plus in order to use this type of plug-in. So the plug-ins that Microsoft is adding to Copilot this month are essentially already available to ChatGPT Plus users, but they do not have to pay to use them in Copilot.

So without further ado, let's take a quick look at how Microsoft plans to change Copilot in the coming month. According to the company, you can try out new plug-ins starting today, and new skills will be available on Copilot starting in late March.

Microsoft did not provide a complete list of plug-ins coming to Copilot in the next month, but it did cite Kayak, Klarna, Shopify, and OpenTable as examples.

Since these are all plugins that are already available to ChatGPT Plus users, it is expected that more ChatGPT plugins will appear in Copilot over the next year.

Microsoft has provided us with a complete list of new skills that will be added to Copilot starting in late March. These are all upgrades to Copilot's ability to interact directly with Windows 11 PCs, one of our favorite uses of Copilot.

None of these upcoming upgrades to Copilot are particularly earth-shattering, but they are steps in the right direction for the AI assistant. I have been testing and using Copilot since its launch late last year, and its direct implementation in Windows is, for me, the most exciting implementation of this technology.

But right now it is still just an expectation. As someone who has serious hand and wrist problems, I like the idea of having a Windows assistant that does all the computing tasks I don't want to do, but so far Copilot has not been very useful. One of its main weaknesses is its inability to reliably "see" what is going on inside the PC or make significant changes (beyond simple functions like switching dark modes).

So while it is nice to have new plug-ins, it is the new skills that are most intriguing to make Copilot a more capable Windows assistant: allowing Copilot to empty the recycle bin, turn on battery saver, etc. is a step in the right direction, and hopefully in the (near) future it will be able to tell a laptop that its battery will last at least 4 hours in the future, or move files to the Recycle Bin after 90 days of non-use.