Microsoft is taking a bold and unprecedented step in the world of artificial intelligence, as it has begun to transform its smart assistant Copilot from a mere technical tool to a human-like digital entity with facial expressions, continuous memory, and an identity that grows and evolves over time.

This vision is led by Mustafa Suleiman, the company's Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer, who envisions a future in which Copilot becomes a digital object with its own character, virtual place, and even personal history.

Microsoft
has announced the launch of a new experience called Copilot Appearance, which is a visual version of Copilot that can interact with the user via realistic facial expressions, such as smiling, gesturing, and even showing surprise. This feature is part of the company's efforts to humanize the digital assistant, so that it is not only textual or voice responses, but also emotionally reactive.

The new feature is currently available in beta at Copilot Labs, and is targeted at a limited segment of users in the US, Canada, and UK. It seems that the company has chosen to phase out the rollout to assess how receptive users are to this unique experience.

A digital identity that grows with time

In an interview, Mustafa Suleiman expressed a deep vision of the future for Copilot, imagining it as a digital being with a fixed identity, a virtual place to live, and aging just like a human would. He also talked about a concept called "digital patina", a term inspired by the beauty of things that change and distort slightly over time, as if they acquire value and antiquity from the effect of use, which is lacking in the contemporary digital world.

Suleiman believes that it is important for the AI to go through the same experience of time, so that it remembers previous conversations, changes based on your relationship with it, and has a kind of shared history with you.

Leadership background and deep
experience Mustafa Suleiman
is one of the founders of Google's DeepMind, and has been instrumental in developing AI projects there. After leaving Google, he founded Inflection AI, where he developed a smart personal assistant called Pi that focuses on emotional interaction and deep personalization. This project formed the philosophical basis for what it does today at Microsoft.