[HN Gopher] Microsoft Introduces 'Copilot Mode' in Edge
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       Microsoft Introduces 'Copilot Mode' in Edge
        
       Author : Bogdanp
       Score  : 42 points
       Date   : 2025-07-29 16:07 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blogs.windows.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blogs.windows.com)
        
       | crinkly wrote:
       | From the Privacy Policy: There will always be clear, visual cues
       | on your browser when Copilot is viewing or listening.
       | 
       |  _" CoPilot, please install Firefox for me"_
        
         | pinewurst wrote:
         | "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"
        
       | cibyr wrote:
       | "built to the highest Microsoft standards of security, privacy
       | and performance" seems perhaps importantly different from "but to
       | the highest standards".
        
         | askonomm wrote:
         | Translation: plain-text/no security, as much telemetry as
         | possible, and performance depends on how beefy of a computer
         | you have, but it better be beefy.
        
         | meindnoch wrote:
         | I wonder if "the highest Microsoft standards" are above of
         | below "military grade"?
        
         | rs186 wrote:
         | "the highest Microsoft standards of security, privacy and
         | performance" is a very low bar. It doesn't add any confidence.
         | They might as well not talk about it at all.
        
       | fzaninotto wrote:
       | This new browser mode is a robot that replaces visitors on
       | websites. It can't be good news for website editors...
       | 
       | Should we (developers) start building websites for robots?
        
         | askonomm wrote:
         | AI is building websites for AI. Let the enshittification
         | Olympics commence!
        
         | franze wrote:
         | Well, guess what we are doing when we say SEO?
        
         | josefresco wrote:
         | We already build websites for Googlebot so I don't really see
         | much a difference. Maybe designers should be worried because if
         | there's nothing to "look at" there's no point in making it look
         | nice. This feels like XML/XHTML all over again.
        
       | __loam wrote:
       | Legitimately reads like an April fool's joke
        
       | TrackerFF wrote:
       | A big ongoing challenge is how to automate human actions on
       | websites - specifically those that don't offer any API for the
       | data needed, and and make it as hard as possible to scrape them.
       | Almost every data job I've had, have had such part time projects
       | going on internally, typical "How do we automate data extraction
       | from [x] site" where the websites either refuse to provide any
       | services, or simply can't (don't have the resources). And up
       | until now it has been some sort of RPA / Robotic Process
       | Automation problem.
       | 
       | I'm not talking about nefarious motives for doing such either,
       | for our part it is just tedious task where humans spend too much
       | time filling in forms / clicking on UI components, and doing the
       | download manually.
       | 
       | So while letting agents run wild on problems like this can (and
       | surely will) lead to abuse, it will likely also free up _so_ much
       | time for the people doing such tasks for actual work.
        
         | Aachen wrote:
         | > or simply can't (don't have the resources). And up until now
         | it has been some sort of RPA / Robotic Process Automation
         | problem.
         | 
         | Wouldn't it be like half the cost to your organisation if you
         | do it for them? If govt agency xyz doesn't have the resources
         | to build this, offer to make it, get access to the source, plug
         | it into a dead simple API, get your data and everybody's happy?
         | 
         | I've never held a data analysis position so I have no idea if
         | such an org would be open to it. If not, it sounds more like
         | the former issue (gatekeeping and unwillingness) than the
         | latter (inability or resource lack)
        
           | meindnoch wrote:
           | No, because then they would realize their data is worth
           | money.
        
             | Aachen wrote:
             | The person above said they were approaching these places
             | already, so latest at that time, they've realised that
        
       | ghxst wrote:
       | I had no idea that Microsoft set up a discord server for copilot.
        
       | nolok wrote:
       | I don't understand what microsoft is doing with their Copilot
       | whatever push.
       | 
       | They have 50 different offers, all with their own pricing, and
       | they all suck, and Microsoft themselves don't like their results
       | in that field.
       | 
       | Let me solve it for you Microsoft: the money maker you're sitting
       | on today, is "hey excel, make a summary of those 8 sheets to
       | identify our 5 most profitables products and their evolution in
       | sales the past 3 years, add that on a new sheet at the end with a
       | visual graph". None of their product does that right now, instead
       | they tell you the step on how to do it.
       | 
       | Instead of making a bazillion different weird thing, Excel and
       | Office already have their API, just make your "AI" bridge natural
       | talk to excel common task and see every company register it for
       | their employee. I'm not even exagerating, I would in an instant.
       | 
       | I tried many AI tool for excel and none of them come anywhere
       | close to that. It must be much harder than I first thought, but
       | then again they spent BILLIONS on this.
       | 
       | For a company that own business logic as a basic idea, they're
       | really terrible at exploiting it with new ideas. Even just
       | natural talk to power query steps would be worth it.
        
         | oidar wrote:
         | It really is super obvious that the winning move for most apps
         | is to add an text interface with LLM capabilities. Like autocad
         | - but LLM accessible.
        
           | Mystery-Machine wrote:
           | You say "text interface" because that's what you're most used
           | to. It could as well be audio interface.
        
         | bn-l wrote:
         | The tech is arguably not there yet. From my own observations,
         | normies get annoyed quickly because they expect it to work like
         | deterministic software. And they tend to be way less interested
         | in it in general, especially when I'm breathlessly telling them
         | about this and that latest development.
        
           | karel-3d wrote:
           | oh wow people want their software to be deterministic and
           | with the same set of inputs get the same set of outputs! What
           | is this, the 90s?
        
           | nolok wrote:
           | But I can ask the AI, it understand what I want and give me
           | the steps. I can ask it to give it to me in api call instead
           | and it does, after a bit of mashup.
           | 
           | Sure the api link and permissions and yada yada plays a part,
           | but thats exactly how they can trap us into office365, with
           | already use azure permissions and everything.
           | 
           | Again I'm sure it's harder than it looks, but it's not an AI
           | problem anymore, and they're throwing billions at it.
        
           | ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote:
           | > normies
           | 
           | do you mean users?
        
           | wkat4242 wrote:
           | Yeah they don't understand we're in the equivalent phase that
           | the commodore 64 was for the computer.
        
           | surgical_fire wrote:
           | > normies get annoyed quickly because they expect it to work
           | like deterministic software
           | 
           | In very few use cases it is acceptable to have non-
           | deterministic result for computation tasks. It does not
           | matter if you are a normie or an advanced user.
        
             | dotancohen wrote:
             | Normal people don't understand what the word deterministic
             | is, nor do they really expect their software to produce
             | deterministic results. For one thing, they're not running
             | the operation multiple times and comparing the outputs. For
             | another, if they give the same task to three different
             | people they're going to get three different results anyway,
             | so what does it matter if the computer gives three
             | different results, if they even notice.
        
               | surgical_fire wrote:
               | > Normal people don't understand what the word
               | deterministic is
               | 
               | I would argue that they implicitly do, as any user
               | expects the same action performed on a computer or
               | similar system to provide the same outcome.
               | 
               | > For another, if they give the same task to three
               | different people they're going to get three different
               | results
               | 
               | Give the same three tasks to a single user to be executed
               | three times separately, and he will get supremely annoyed
               | if his actions do not give him the same results.
        
               | bigstrat2003 wrote:
               | Not even implicitly understand. A layman is perfectly
               | capable of understanding what deterministic behavior is,
               | and claiming otherwise is just condescension.
        
               | fn-mote wrote:
               | I think "normal" (non-computer) people have a mental
               | model for computing that is more like a (possibly bad)
               | coworker.
               | 
               | They would quickly adapt to "reload it a few times if it
               | doesn't work right away".
               | 
               | Isn't this what people are already doing when they browse
               | the web? I know I am.
        
               | izacus wrote:
               | What are you basing those claims on?
        
         | donmcronald wrote:
         | > "hey excel, make a summary of those 8 sheets to identify our
         | 5 most profitables products and their evolution in sales the
         | past 3 years, add that on a new sheet at the end with a visual
         | graph"
         | 
         | Aren't they just pattern recognition and regurgitation
         | machines? How would it analyze and interpret unique data with a
         | pattern it's never seen?
         | 
         | Some of the AI stuff is very useful, but it's been massively
         | oversold. In my experience, it's great for working on
         | documentation or creating a one-time-use script to query an
         | API, but it's not good at the "big picture" tasks they want for
         | a sales pitch.
        
           | prashnts wrote:
           | I would give the LLM statistical tools that work to find
           | general anomalies, distributions etc. from the spreadsheet.
           | Then it's about an LLM interpreting (or not) those results in
           | natural language.
           | 
           | Of course this is a can of worms for a product because we can
           | still not guarantee accuracy.
        
             | donmcronald wrote:
             | That makes sense to me in terms of tech, but I don't get
             | how the economics will work. If one company has an agent
             | that's a great statistical tool, another is great for
             | making charts, another is great for grammar and spelling,
             | etc., I'm guessing it'll cost a bazillion dollars in
             | subscriptions.
        
           | dotancohen wrote:
           | > How would it analyze and interpret unique data with a
           | pattern it's never seen?
           | 
           | That's called unsupervised learning, and it was field of
           | study in machine learning long before LLMs were anything near
           | viable. Surprisingly, LLMs are good at it too.
        
         | danso wrote:
         | Having recently watched a corporate trainer spend 15 minutes
         | trying to figure out why Copilot wasn't correctly importing a
         | CSV with headers when "it worked fine when I showed this 2
         | weeks ago" -- my guess is that the tech isn't quite there yet
         | to sell (reliable) AI-powered Excel
        
         | autoexec wrote:
         | > It must be much harder than I first thought, but then again
         | they spent BILLIONS on this.
         | 
         | Which is why MS and every other company keeps pushing half-
         | baked garbage AI products onto the public at every opportunity.
         | So much money has been sunk into AI that they need something to
         | show for it. They also hope that as people use it they can
         | improve the AI they have so that maybe one day it can become
         | something worthwhile. As a bonus it's one more way for them to
         | collect your data and get you used to asking an AI for what you
         | need instead of using your brain.
        
         | mceoin wrote:
         | Check out Sourcetable, you might like it for your AI
         | spreadsheet work. It's _much_ better than Excel copilot in
         | every aspect (financial modeling, data science, data cleaning,
         | agent tools, etc.)
        
         | wincy wrote:
         | I asked o3 pro to do something like this a few months ago when
         | I paid for a month of ChatGPT Pro. It got very excited and said
         | it was on it and spent 20 minutes absolutely cranking. Then it
         | spit out the world's saddest excel file with no formatting, and
         | half the data truncated.
        
           | homeonthemtn wrote:
           | Sounds like my post-coffee morning routine, with similar
           | results
        
         | Spoom wrote:
         | Not quite the thing you're describing, but I saw this demoed
         | recently and thought it was pretty cool: The AI function in
         | Google Sheets[1]. Call Gemini with the context of individual
         | cells and have it respond in the same cell. Take a look if your
         | company is in Workspace Labs.
         | 
         | 1. https://support.google.com/docs/answer/15820999
         | 
         | Disclaimer: Googler, opinions my own.
        
         | tialaramex wrote:
         | Microsoft's branding is mostly about time and should not be
         | assumed to have any other significance. You might think you can
         | guess what "Visual Direct COM" would be or "Active Windows.NET"
         | but the words have no meaning beside "Currently this word is
         | hot so my new product needs that word". A Copilot XBox Edge
         | might be a video game console with AI but it equally might be a
         | new version of Excel. There is no coherent rationale.
         | 
         | A company with an actual rationale names products PlayStation,
         | PlayStation 2, PS3, PS4, PS5
         | 
         | Microsoft called their rival products XBox, XBox 360, XBox One,
         | XBox Series
         | 
         | Asked to put six animals in order, some might figure Anteater,
         | Bear, Elephant, Fox, Goose, Pigeon makes sense - alphabetical
         | order, English names. Others might try to rank them by size,
         | the Elephant is definitely bigger than a Bear, but is the Fox
         | bigger than a Goose? Not sure. You might give them Latin names,
         | there are several reasonable things you might do or at least
         | attempt
         | 
         | But Microsoft are like that's easy: Elephant, Dog, Squirrel,
         | Another Squirrel, Sparrow, Bear, Elephant. And like, that's not
         | even six animals, and it's the wrong animals, and your order
         | makes no sense, what is wrong with you?
        
           | danudey wrote:
           | How many times has Microsoft had some kind of product that
           | isn't taking off how they wanted to, so they just rename it
           | and give it a new coat of paint? Microsoft Office? I think
           | you mean Office 365! What does that mean? Nothing, it's just
           | Office but you don't get to decide when to update.
           | 
           | Anyway, now it's Office 365 Copilot! What does that mean? It
           | means it's Office, but with an AI which you didn't ask for,
           | which doesn't really do much for you practically, and also
           | which costs 50% more, and you can only opt-out by trying to
           | cancel your subscription entirely.
           | 
           | You can tell AI is a grift because it's all dark patterns and
           | lies with these people.
        
         | crinkly wrote:
         | They're going for the "if we throw shit at everything then some
         | of it will stick". The problem is everything is covered in
         | shit.
         | 
         | The things that aren't shit are harder than they thought.
        
         | insane_dreamer wrote:
         | My experience with Google Docs + Gemini is similar. Gemini is
         | great for coding, but the integration with Docs / Sheets /
         | Slides / Drive is absolute garbage; does hardly anything
         | useful, doesn't do the actual tedious jobs I want it to do. It
         | couldn't even find a document in Drive based on my description,
         | or create a decent-looking slide.
         | 
         | (Gemini is proving excellent for coding, but it shocks me how
         | poor the integration is for other uses.)
         | 
         | The "AI" integrations I've tried in other tools (Figma, Gamma)
         | are pretty much garbage too.
        
         | danudey wrote:
         | > I don't understand what microsoft is doing with their Copilot
         | whatever push.
         | 
         | Anything they can think of. Honestly, anywhere they think that
         | they could put AI to try to convince people that it's a real
         | thing to care about, they put it there. Google is doing the
         | same thing; I get popups any time I try to access any Google
         | thing, like mail, docs, or the Google Cloud console. I don't
         | care, Gemini, and I don't trust you.
         | 
         | Even Apple is jumping in on the AI train, presumably just to
         | avoid getting beaten up in the press for being "behind the
         | times", but thankfully they seem to be trying to start slow and
         | make a good product out of it (which they have yet to do)
         | rather than telling everyone that it can revolutionize
         | everything that anyone ever does and forcing people to hear
         | about it at every opportunity.
        
         | mgh2 wrote:
         | Such crap products, yet they are valued more than Apple.
         | Finance folks are not engineers or product people, so they
         | don't know any better.
        
         | JumpCrisscross wrote:
         | > _50 different offers, all with their own pricing_
         | 
         | They also randomly time out mid-task, _e.g._ in image
         | generation, without an obvious way to pay for more compute
         | time.
        
       | donmcronald wrote:
       | > you can let Copilot see all your open tabs so it can understand
       | the full context of what you're exploring online
       | 
       | Isn't that going to poison the context with low quality, SEO blog
       | spam? How long is it going to be before content mills start
       | filling the web with defensible lies?
       | 
       | For example, "exploding cell phone charger X is built with a high
       | quality transformer." The AI will mindlessly regurgitate that
       | without considering the nuance of source. When _I_ evaluate that
       | stuff the source plays a major role in the weight I give to the
       | statement.
       | 
       | None of the AI I've seen does a proper job of considering the
       | source and I'm guessing it's because they _can 't_ attribute
       | sources due to the massive IP theft that was required to build
       | the systems.
        
         | Mystery-Machine wrote:
         | Google already has page score for every website out there. What
         | makes you think that their LLM can't be made to use it? That
         | statement sounds a lot like "AI can't generate human fingers,
         | it will never be able to generate realistic images with humans
         | in them" or "it can't do X so it will never be able to code Y".
         | Shortsighted.
        
           | donmcronald wrote:
           | Google search results are much worse than they used to be.
           | And how would an LLM extrapolate good outputs from garbage
           | inputs?
        
       | kburman wrote:
       | It feels like one user-hostile move after another from Microsoft
       | lately. Forcing Edge, using dark patterns to block Chrome,
       | resetting telemetry with updates, the whole Recall fiasco... and
       | now this. It's exhausting.
       | 
       | My working theory is they see Google's browser revenue and think,
       | "we're the OS, we deserve a bigger cut." It's an incredible level
       | of arrogance that's burning through decades of user trust for
       | short-term gain.
       | 
       | Instead of all this, why not actually compete by being better?
       | They could make Windows a bastion of privacy that protects users
       | from app snooping. They could foster a real native app ecosystem
       | again, like on macOS, so the OS itself adds unique value. That's
       | how you build loyalty, not this constant squeezing of your user
       | base.
        
         | autoexec wrote:
         | I feel like Microsoft's attitude is that they can screw over
         | their users, make money hand over fist by exploiting their
         | private and personal data, and Windows users will be powerless
         | because there's nowhere else for them to go. Anyone who was
         | going to use an Apple computer is already doing it. They aren't
         | afraid of linux either (although maybe they should be since
         | it's been gaining ground). Why care about building loyalty or
         | adding value when you're a monopoly?
        
           | tracker1 wrote:
           | They should be more scared... Mac, ChromeOS and Linux now
           | have roughly 1/3 of desktop/laptop users. Linux having gained
           | a lot of ground just this past year, and IMO Valve is
           | probably solely responsible for most of that.
           | 
           | Even with the Valve store cut as high as it is, and some of
           | their sketchy terms... they've been far better stewards to
           | gaming than MS has been to Computing/OS.
        
         | skydhash wrote:
         | Isn't Google Revenue mostly Ads? Chrome is free, YouTube is
         | free, and most of the services targetting the general public
         | are also free. With Microsoft, it was expected that you pay for
         | anything useful (Windows, Office, Visual Studio,...).
        
         | tracker1 wrote:
         | Exactly... they've had glimmers of greatness here and there,
         | and it feels like a handful of executive weenies literally
         | twist it to try and wrench every penny of value from every
         | user/customer they can.
         | 
         | For the love of $diety, complete a UI transition across the OS,
         | get things in order, stop shoveling things onto people, don't
         | return ads and internet search results from start-menu searches
         | and just make great products. I was an Edge fan until they
         | added all the garbage, starting with coupons, etc.
         | 
         | VS Code has been good, but they gimp their own .Net support...
         | they do great with .Net/C# but turn around and dump their only
         | SQL for ARM option as ARM is taking off... They rebrand RDP
         | despite it being considered the best UI remoting option around.
         | They keep releasing CoPilot everything that doesn't do the one
         | thing that would give their users the most value, and are sub-
         | par with open offerings.
         | 
         | At this point, I cannot support MS-SQL over PostgreSQL for any
         | new projects given a choice. I definitely don't support
         | developing solutions to run on Windows Server, and I'm
         | questioning my use of VS Code despite it being by far my
         | favorite editor since shortly after release.
        
         | deafpolygon wrote:
         | why? they already sell your data to all the 3 letter agencies
        
       | adamrezich wrote:
       | It's kind of funny how "Copilot" has become the new "Live"--this
       | Brand Word that Microsoft marketing seems obsessed with, branding
       | everything they can with it, completely regardless of how much
       | they dilute whatever positive qualities their users initially
       | associated with it.
        
         | rs186 wrote:
         | Who would thought that Microsoft did not change a single bit
         | after two decades?
         | 
         | A link that I found on a different HN thread that is somewhat
         | related: https://www.osnews.com/story/19921/full-text-an-epic-
         | bill-ga...
        
         | pndy wrote:
         | Don't forget about MSN, Windows Live, Metro. I wonder what will
         | be the " _next big thing_ " they'll gonna push as a brand
        
       | fleebee wrote:
       | Not sure I like the fact that Copilot inferred that Dylan likes
       | football so it offered to buy tickets when Dylan launched his
       | browser.
       | 
       | In general, this seems to be less about empowering users and more
       | about shoving AI in their faces. You don't need to prompt
       | anything, it just is there.
        
       | skydhash wrote:
       | > _For decades, the way we've used browsers has remained linear:
       | open a tab (or 20), search for something, read a page, repeat.
       | It's a model that's worked well, but it hasn't fundamentally
       | changed._
       | 
       | Is it linear though? I think most people are using tabs the way
       | everyone use documents. Open one, find the passage you need and
       | keep it there. Lots of current web app makes that hard (lazy
       | loading, memory leaks,...).
       | 
       | A better augmentation would be annotations. Create a new
       | notetaking session which appears in a side bar, then either
       | screenshot or highlight a section, then it is saved alongside the
       | comment (and tags) and the context (link, date,..). No need for a
       | lurking agent.
       | 
       | ADDENDUM
       | 
       | A somewhat simpler version can be found in Orgmode and Emacs. You
       | can store link to almost anything and then the capture feature in
       | Org mode can use them in templates.
        
       | tracker1 wrote:
       | When Edge first released, I really liked it... even made it my
       | default on Linux for a while. Then came the in-the-box features,
       | like coupon offers, etc... and I just had more and more crap to
       | disable to where I just went back to Brave.
       | 
       | I like nice browser syncing between devices. I don't even mind
       | what that means in terms of some slack on privacy... What I don't
       | like are in your face marketing efforts. I absolutely abhor
       | commercials, and have been willing to pay for services that don't
       | have them. I switched to Linux literally the first time I saw an
       | ad in the start menu search results.
       | 
       |  _I_ don 't need Microsoft products. I'm a computer user first,
       | and a consumer a distant second. MS really needs to learn this
       | lesson. Just saw that US Gov is reporting 6% Linux desktop usage,
       | which is higher than the 5% StatsCounter recently posted. Linux
       | has gained 20-30% in just this past year, even Gaming on Linux
       | while less than perfect/ideal is still relatively smooth for most
       | games thanks to Valve/Steam, they definitely use their 30% cut
       | well and while expensive seem to be at least a good steward of
       | their ecosystem.
       | 
       | I feel like Microsoft has completely lost he plot in a lot of
       | ways. Azure and .Net have had every opportunity to become
       | darlings in the developer community... the tooling and options
       | are pretty good. VS Code has become just about the most popular
       | developer editor (not to mention forks). Why they choose to abuse
       | their common users is beyond me... if they just stuck to the
       | great parts without trying to wrench every penny of value from
       | every user they would be much more well regarded.
       | 
       | As it stands, any company selling commercial software should
       | seriously be working on packaging for Linux... at least
       | appImage/Flatpak. There's especially good opportunity for
       | competing software vendors to Adobe in this space. It's one of
       | the few gaps, and the tide of software for Linux is definitely
       | growing and there's plenty of room for commercial software here.
        
         | carodgers wrote:
         | +1 for Brave!
        
           | anthk wrote:
           | Brave it's Spyware.
        
       | hankman86 wrote:
       | Why has basic product management gone out of the window in this
       | new era of AI enablement? Like on the most basic level: who ever
       | asked for this, where is product-market fit for this kind of
       | browser automation?
        
       | rs186 wrote:
       | Bloomberg's piece on Microsoft Copilot, if you haven't read it:
       | 
       | https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-24/chatgpt-v...
       | 
       | And HN discussion:
       | 
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44367638
       | 
       | Basically, nobody wants to use Copilot, because it sucks.
        
         | dmix wrote:
         | > Microsoft is struggling to sell its Copilot AI assistant to
         | corporations because many of their employees want ChatGPT.
         | 
         | So Copilot isn't using GPT?
         | 
         | I tried googling it and one thread said they use GPT4. Maybe
         | it's the wrapper they built that doesn't work well.
        
           | rs186 wrote:
           | GPT and ChatGPT are two different things. One is an LLM, the
           | other is a full product.
           | 
           | > Maybe it's the wrapper they built that doesn't work well.
           | 
           | That's the issue. It's almost difficult to imagine you can
           | build a bad product on top of GPT models, but Microsoft
           | showed us how.
        
       | deafpolygon wrote:
       | more ways to try and track user behaviour and steal... i mean,
       | request private user data.
        
       | asim wrote:
       | Whoever starts by replacing the operating system with this style
       | of interface wins. The point isn't to reinvent the browser, it's
       | to change how we interact with technology completely. Right now
       | it's all iteration but essentially if all you need is ChatGPT
       | then just make the OS a chat interface to begin with.
        
       | terhechte wrote:
       | So interesting to read all these negative comments. I'm actually
       | considering installing Edge because this something I've really
       | been wanting for some time. I run Safari & Firefox and I know
       | there're some plugins, but this deep integration (e.g. across
       | tabs) is missing. I usually open 15+ tabs when I'm researching
       | something, and then being able to ask an LLM questions across
       | these tabs is awesome.
       | 
       | The main reason for me not to install this, honestly, is that
       | I've heard that OpenAI is working on something similar and I
       | already have their subscription. I might just wait a bit longer,
       | but I really can see the appeal of this product.
        
       | nerevarthelame wrote:
       | I tried using it and am not impressed. I don't know if it's
       | possible to do any of the things shown in the promotional videos.
       | It seems like a typical web-enabled LLM, but in a browser
       | extension. I didn't see ANY functionality from "Copilot mode"
       | that doesn't already exist in any other web-enabled LLM. It
       | couldn't book anything. It didn't move through the site. It did
       | poor analysis. It hallucinated links. It gaslit me and told me
       | that I needed to manually do the things I was asking - and gave
       | me incorrect instructions on how to do that.
       | 
       | I had to double-check that I was correctly opted into this new
       | feature because it seemed like a terrible implementation of very
       | established technology. Every task I attempted was a frustrating
       | failure. Embarrassingly bad stuff.
       | 
       | If you really want to know my specific gripes: I navigated to a
       | major hotel chain's site that I have discounted rates at, subject
       | to availability. I asked Copilot to find me a hotel within
       | driving distance to my home with those discounted rates available
       | for certain dates. It claimed that it checked that the rates were
       | available (something I didn't expect it to be able to do), and
       | gave me a few hotels. The hotels exist, but every one of the
       | "View hotel details" links were broken. Although it said it
       | checked to see if rooms were available under the discounted
       | rates, it definitely didn't. I tried to get it to book a
       | reservation anyway, and it said that the "page isn't loading
       | properly right now - either it's been moved or there's a glitch
       | on the hotel's site." The hotel's site was working just fine.
       | 
       | I navigated to a recipe website I often use. I asked Copilot to
       | find me some recipes fitting certain basic criteria ("vegan,"
       | "quick and easy").
       | 
       | The links it provided to each recipe were all to the main page -
       | not actually to the recipes themselves, even though the labeled
       | link text suggested it would be to the individual recipe.
       | 
       | Although the site has a plethora of vegan options, 2/4 of its
       | recommendations were non-vegan recipes that it gave tips on how
       | to make vegan. Recommending that I make quesadillas by "swapping
       | nutritional yeast instead of dairy cheese" is a terrible, awful
       | idea. Especially in the context of all the other great, already
       | vegan recipes on the site it ignored to make this recommendation.
       | 
       | For the other converted-to-vegan recipe, I manually searched for
       | the original recipe (since it couldn't provide recipe-specific
       | links) to see that the author already had a vegan version of the
       | recipe linked in the original instructions. Copilot's
       | veganization was unnecessary and lower quality than what the
       | author had already provided on the site.
        
         | aziaziazi wrote:
         | For what it worth: nutritional yeast is great to replace
         | parmigiana-like cheese. For mozzarella it's probable a bad
         | choice if you want to be as close as possible, but yeast is
         | definitely not an hallucination as a cheese replacement. I'd be
         | interested to see one or two propositions if you're willing to
         | share.
        
       | thesdev wrote:
       | > For decades, the way we've used browsers has remained linear:
       | open a tab (or 20), search for something, read a page, repeat.
       | It's a model that's worked well, but it hasn't fundamentally
       | changed.
       | 
       | Maybe it doesn't need to change if it's working well? Have you
       | considered that?
        
         | bigstrat2003 wrote:
         | Next they'll be trying to sell you on eating with your ear or
         | something because "for millennia, the way we eat food hasn't
         | fundamentally changed".
        
       | rich_sasha wrote:
       | What I really need is a copilot plugin for my copilot. Coming up
       | with good prompts is hard, I want an LLM fine tuned for this
       | particular task.
        
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       (page generated 2025-07-29 23:01 UTC)