AI Horizon

Copilot for Gaming is an AI that can improve gaming experience, and it’s on the way for Xbox players soon. Fatima Kardar, Xbox Corporate VP of Gaming AI, demoed the features on the Official Xbox Podcast and showed how the tool can help players jump right back into a game without much downtime.

It’s an experience all gamers know: You come back to a game (like Skyrim) after a long break with no idea why you’re wielding a flaming sword, why the townsfolk are angry, or where that huge bounty came from. Or, in simpler applications, you have no memory of what’s happening in the story up to that point.

When asked where a player had left off in Age of Empires IV, Copilot answered, “Last time, you were defending Tyre in the Sultans Ascend campaign and ventured out to take the fight to the Franks, but … let’s just say it didn’t go as planned.” It then followed up with, “Your base was destroyed by the Beast after a failed head-on battle with your Turkic Horse Archers.”

Kardar says you can even adjust the level of snark that Copilot responds with.

Another part of the video shows a player asking Copilot for Minecraft advice in real time, but the service refused to answer certain questions until cheats were enabled.

Kardar said, “Gaming is the only form of entertainment where you can get stuck, so that’s where you want something to show up to say, ‘let’s help you get past that.”

Another feature showed a player asking for a guide on defeating a specific enemy, for which Copilot provided a series of answers and advice. However, Xbox didn’t provide information on the data set, and that raises questions about how its answers are being generated. In response to a question about data usage by Digital Trends following the announcement, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that Copilot for Gaming scrapes public information, though it stops short of explaining what that entails.

“Similar to other Copilots, Copilot for Gaming accesses public sources of information from the web using the Bing search index and results, and provides tailored responses for the individual player based on its understanding of the player’s activity and the games they’re playing on the Xbox platform. Our goal is to have Copilot for Gaming source the most accurate game knowledge — so we are working with game studios to make sure the information Copilot surfaces reflects their vision, and Copilot will refer players back to the original source of the information. ”

Copilot has a lot of potential, both in terms of ease of use as well as accessibility. Kardar says the feature is there when you need it, but can easily be pushed to the side if you don’t want to use it. However, it does raise privacy concerns — exactly how much of your data can it access? — among other questions. A Microsoft spokesperson tells Digital Trends that players will have some control over their privacy.

“During this preview on mobile, players will be able to decide how and when they want to interact with Copilot for Gaming, whether it has access to their conversation history, and what it does on their behalf.”