Microsoft's Pavan Davuluri caught some backlash when he said that your PC should be something that you can talk to, but the company's plans are coming to fruition. There's a big Copilot rollout being announced, and part of that is the ability to launch Copilot by using the wake term, "Hey, Copilot".

While that's probably the biggest news, there's actually quite a bit being unveiled.

Hey Copilot is the new Hey Cortana

When briefing the press on this news, one thing that was mentioned constantly was that this is all opt-in. Microsoft says you'll have to turn this on in Settings, but let's be clear. Microsoft wouldn't be Microsoft is there weren't annoying pop-ups telling you to do it. After all, how else do you boost engagement metrics?

Once you do, you can say the wake word and it'll indicate you're talking to Copilot, and you can say "Goodbye" to end the conversation.

And Copilot is becoming more powerful. Copilot Actions can actually do things on your behalf, again, with your permission. It's already been able to interact with services on your behalf, but now it will be able to take action on your own local files.

Copilot connectors are going to let you integrate not only Microsoft services, but Google services too. You can interact with Google Drive, Calendar, Gmail, and more.

Unfortunately, Copilot Actions is starting with "a narrow set of use cases", which means that your initial experience with this is going to be that you're told it can't do most of the things you want it to, an obstacle that can be difficult for services to overcome in future iterations. Indeed, it's hard to retrain users if they think the product just doesn't work.

Copilot is coming to gaming handhelds too

Microsoft also introduced Gaming Copilot, available in beta on the new Asus ROG Xbox Ally series. The idea is that you'll be able to ask for help, get recommendations, and things like that.

Microsoft's announcement really didn't get into what Gaming Copilot can actually do, or why you'd want it. It seems like it's just searching the web for game tips, unlike HP's OMEN AI services that will actually help you fine-tune your system settings for optimal game performance.

Indeed, being that this is exclusive to gaming handhelds that, by definition, have a different power envelope than a console (there is no mention of this coming to Xbox consoles), you'd think optimizations would be a key value proposition for something like this.

Notably, however, is that the new ROG Xbox Ally handhelds are Copilot+ PCs, meaning they have powerful NPUs. That might be a reason for the exclusivity, at least for now.

Most of these features will arrive as an update to the Copilot app, while some will come to Windows Insiders a bit later. Again, Microsoft said that everything mentioned is opt-in.