In July of this year, it was rumored that Microsoft was testing a new Copilot-first user interface (UI), which was later officially confirmed. Edge now has deeper integration with Copilot, which can see your tabs and help you navigate the web, but it doesn't really "automate" all tasks like Perplexity Comet does. This may change in the future.
A survey of Edge users suggests they may want to use its new Copilot mode, which replaces the traditional search bar in the new tab page with Copilot's compose box and allows the use of Bing and Copilot at the same time.
Copilot mode also enables Ask Copilot in the address bar, which allows you to view tab content and summarize or answer questions. But I wouldn't call it "automation." This is nowhere near what Perplexity Comet does, but it may be improved in the future.
Microsoft's investigation started with some typical questions, such as whether you use the Edge browser and, if so, whether you use Copilot. Then, how do you use Copilot? Are you using Copilot mode? We've encountered similar issues, but they weren't particularly interesting because the investigation pointed to advanced features like "multi-label context" that already existed.
Microsoft may try to improve "multi-tab context" support for Edge Copilot mode so that Copilot can better read and reason about all open tags and then answer based on the full context.
Finally, Copilot can control Edge and perform various actions, such as extracting tables into Excel, drafting emails from pages, filling out forms, or generating shopping lists from multiple tabs. In the future, Copilot may be able to compose emails at your direction and send them on your behalf, just like Perplexity Comet.
Finally, the survey also asked users "how often they use the browser's AI mode" and tried to understand its usefulness or different use cases. Is it for learning, programming, traveling, shopping, or finance? Based on feedback, we may see more improvements in these areas.
Microsoft plans to adjust prompts and UI flows for these vertical industries.
Some of the advanced AI features coming to Edge may be locked behind a paywall, possibly a $20 Copilot Pro subscription. The $20 Copilot Pro also unlocks the hidden Journeys feature in Edge, which uses native AI (not Copilot) to summarize and group your browsing activity. This is one of the AI features coming to the browser soon.