‘Browsing’ is about to be completely transformed. Finally, our AIs have learnt to speak our languages, and actually see what we see. This demo is particularly close to my heart. It continues work that I started at DeepMind back in 2011. Our first product was a fashion search engine that allowed you to browse similar colors, patterns and styles. It was too early for deep learning back then. But now to see it come to fruition is just surreal. It’s like having a partner to think out loud with, infinitely patient, never judgey, making you smarter and feel more supported all the time. We’re now at the stage where our vision isn’t just possible, it’s here. When Copilot lives with you and sees what you see, it can realize exactly the kind of experience we dreamed about all those years ago. Trevor Back, Mo White and Natalie Varma – we got there in the end! This is going to be a completely new way of interacting with search, images, the web. I can't wait!
Interesting demo! Lots of value for the user in AI-assisted search based on analysis of visuals. And as all screen content & interactions are recorded, obviously lots of marketing value for Microsoft who will know me much better than my girlfriend. Copilot living with me… sounds like this virtual AI shopping assistant would be an idealized girlfriend knowing me perfectly. My needs on this use case are more in how to complement my clothing (very doable with AI), or what to pack for a specific trip (very doable too). We all know that when it is free or under-priced as Copilot is (related to compute costs), we are the product. Ethics and privacy are key in the company & tools users will trust to give their intimacy & deep personal data. I’d like to read more on your operational strategy & vision at Microsoft on this, I know that ethics were important when you were leading Inflection.AI.
Are you at all listening to any of the people criticizing this? Don't let the positive comments go to your head. Most have no idea what it is you're packing. I don't know what the experience is that you dreamed about. I did not ask for your Copilot to live with me. And it sees what I see? What are you talking about? Everything I see, hear and talk about will be recorded by my Copilot and stored somewhere without my permission or control, mainly because somewhere in your Terms and Conditions I had to agree to that? Making me smarter? How exactly? By suggesting to me everything I should do based on what I prompt and what the Copilot has "learned" about me, the personal data of mine it basically is trained on? And it's still just an algorithm, not a new digital species. Your positive description, or what you think is positive, reads like a page out of George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxleys' Brave New World, combined. Kind of figures. Something AI would do. It's the Sad New World 2024. And you just want to bulldozer over us. Force us to live the way you have planned for us. Wow.
Fashion browsing, sushi delivery searching, sexy voice chat, that’s awesome for most people in US Excitement is raised for tech people. That’s how marketing works, indeed.. I’d like to see more people asking about how they won’t be losing their time trying to correct the excel that was produced by GPT4o from their VISA statement (it took me 30 minutes to re-prompt the chat so it won’t make mistakes. I taught it what the columns are and why having the phrase “Apple Pay” in a second row means that it has to stick it to another column at the end.. finally it gave me an excel with some cells relocated by hallucination and sums didn’t match 😀 Look, it’s amazing that the technology progresses - don’t get me wrong, I’m an acc person myself- but I’m a believer of spending precious energy for running GPUs NPUs LPUs and whatever chip comes out for better reasons. We are going to run out of energy my friend
It's an interesting experience because it's more fluid in browsing, searching, and finding relevant clothing items. However, there may be a shift in the future. Instead of browsing for pre-designed and pre-manufactured products, AI could enable us to customize and manufacture unique, one-of-a-kind items. Although this change may take some time, the future of product design might move away from mass-scale preproduction. Consumers could potentially design products that meet their specific needs using generative AI. In this new model, it might not be about browsing and finding products but co-designing them.
A copilot to browse is a start. A co-pilot to learn together, a copilot to challenge and debate ideas, a copilot to help go deeper into a topic, connect across concepts, and more. We are just starting...this is still early along the roadmap as we go from assistants to agents to advisors. Exciting frontiers ahead.
The customer problem isn’t help me shop better but rather, help me figure out what to pack and what clothing gaps to fill. User preferences are key. I don’t like checked shirts, so never suggest this, etc. It should know I don’t like checking bags so everything must fit in a 22” Briggs & Riley suitcase. It can use that info to understand size limits, preventing bulky clothes and providing more mix and match options. An inventory of my existing clothing would help determine what, if anything new is needed. A budget would also be needed. Don’t suggest champagne items on an iced tea budget. Awareness of scheduled events during trip would help plan how many business and casual outfits are needed. Finally, external data like weather during the trip, street conditions between hotel and meetings, and transportation preferences could also impact choices like shoes. A former co-worker almost broke an ankle trying to walk on a cobblestone path in heels as that was all she had brought. This demo just seems a bit annoying because of what the AI doesn’t know, much like when GPS insists on routing me to roads I don’t like to drive. With some changes, this could be amazing.
Kudos on the monumental technical achievements, but watching these forced copilot demos makes me think we're going in the wrong direction. I imagine what it might have been like for a whole slew of companies scrambling to envision cars before the Model T came along. Everyone must have been pondering how to make horses faster, quieter, more reliable, etc. No one was thinking of a revolution in the experience. We need a revolution, not a natural language interface to web search. Those are just my 2 cents...
I wonder how long it will take for us to learn conventional browsing language and habits.
I bet even you don't use it for serious work.
Founder & Executive Search Consultant @ Talos - Data, AI and Tech | Neurodiversity Advocate and ADHDer | Podcast Host
5moYeah, it's cool but I'm not keen on AI seeing and storing data on webpage history. Isn't that what we've just moved away from with cookies? The main worry is that we haven't sorted out the security and privacy issues with AI's training data yet, or regulation, and we want to give them even more access? Are we getting to the point where we are swapping cool features for no control over the data that's generated or used?