Windows 11 Search Boosted by Copilot's AI-Powered Feature

A new search ability is rolling out for the Copilot app. It gives Windows 11 and 10 users an AI-powered search, offering natural language queries. Copilot can also peek inside files and find relevant info you need, saving you the legwork.

Windows 11 is getting a new ability for Copilot to help you find files on your PC, and quickly glean info from those files, should you want to. Windows Latest reports that the extended search powers facilitated by AI, which were previously in testing (a few months ago) with Windows 11, are now rolling out to all users (including those on Windows 10 too).

The folk at Windows Latest have already got the new functionality for the Copilot app and tested it out, being generally impressed by the feature. It allows the user to fire up a local search of the PC – although there are limitations on the locations covered – within the Copilot app simply by typing a natural language query. For example: \"Find my resume for that job application I made last year.\"

Windows Latest observes that this Copilot search is fast, as it's a local search – which also includes any synced files in OneDrive – and leverages Windows search itself. The search provided is also better than a basic Windows 11 search, as you can use natural language as noted. This Copilot-powered search also lets you sidestep some of the bugs with the standard Windows 11 search functionality. However, the scope of the search is limited to commonly used files and the locations covered by this AI search are limited to your essential personal folders by default.

Privacy is a concern as the search capability is turned off by default, and there's a separate slider to allow the AI to read your files. If you want to perform advanced searches, you'll need to grant Copilot access to your files. The rollout of this feature is underway and should be available on all Windows 11 and 10 PCs soon.

According to the source: TechRadar.