As 2025 inches closer, there is no shortage of AI-powered product launches. OpenAI just announced Sora, its long-awaited photorealistic video generator, as part of “Shipmas,” a 12-day series of product releases that rhymes with Christmas. Reddit launched an AI search tool that helps you tap into its hive mind without using Google. That shouldn’t bother Google, which has a new quantum computing chip called Willow that promises to supercharge what AI can do.
Then there’s Microsoft. After investing $13 billion in OpenAI and becoming an early mover in the generative AI race a couple years ago, Microsoft has been building out its stable of AI offerings in recent months. In March, the company acquired Inflection AI and appointed its co-founder, Mustafa Suleyman, as CEO of Microsoft AI, overseeing its consumer AI products including Copilot, Bing, and Edge.
Microsoft’s big early-December product launch doesn’t quite match Sora in terms of scale and buzz, but the new AI tool does do something entirely original.
It’s called Copilot Vision. The basic idea is that Vision allows Copilot, Microsoft’s AI-powered chatbot, to see what you’re seeing in an internet browser. Microsoft calls Copilot an “AI companion,” and with Vision, it makes sense. If you’re shopping for furniture on Wayfair, for instance, you can ask Copilot to find something with a bit of a Memphis design vibe, even if you have no idea what a “Memphis design vibe” even means. Copilot then scans the entire webpage, looking for images that match what you’re asking for, and then points you in that direction. In other words, it can see what you’re seeing on Wayfair, and it can answer all your questions about it. It’s unlike any web browsing experience I’ve ever had.
