{"id":235969,"date":"2025-10-23T21:22:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T21:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/235969\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T21:22:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T21:22:04","slug":"meet-mico-microsofts-ai-version-of-clippy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/235969\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet Mico,\u00a0Microsoft\u2019s AI version of Clippy"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been nearly 30 years since Microsoft\u2019s Office assistant, Clippy, first graced our screens as an annoying paperclip. After the Groucho-browed interruptions of Clippy came to an end in 2001 with Office XP, Microsoft tried to revive the spirit of an assistant with Cortana on Windows Phone<\/a>. The technology still wasn\u2019t quite there a decade ago, but now Microsoft is ready to try again with Mico, a new character for Copilot\u2019s voice mode.<\/p>\n

\u201cClippy walked so that we could run,\u201d jokes Jacob Andreou, corporate VP of product and growth at Microsoft AI, in an interview with The Verge. Microsoft has been testing Mico (rhymes with \u201cpico\u201d) for a few months now, as a virtual character that responds with real-time expressions when you talk to it. Mico is now being turned on by default in Copilot\u2019s voice mode, where you\u2019ll also have the option to turn the bouncing orb off.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can see it, it reacts as you speak to it, and if you talk about something sad you\u2019ll see its facial expressions react almost immediately,\u201d explains Andreou. \u201cAll the technology fades into the background, and you just start talking to this cute orb and build this connection with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mico will only be available in the US at launch, and this new Copilot virtual character will also rely on a new memory feature inside Copilot to be able to surface facts it has learned about you and the things you\u2019re working on.<\/p>\n

Microsoft is also adding a Learn Live mode to Mico that will turn the character into a Socratic tutor that \u201cguides you through concepts instead of just giving answers.\u201d It even uses interactive whiteboards and visual cues, and looks like it\u2019s targeted at students preparing for finals or anyone trying to practice a new language.<\/p>\n

Mico is all part of a goal to give Copilot an identity, as Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman alluded to earlier this year. \u201cCopilot will certainly have a kind of permanent identity, a presence, and it will have a room that it lives in, and it will age,\u201d said Suleyman in July<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mico also forms a key part of Microsoft\u2019s new initiative to get people to talk to their computers<\/a>. The software maker is running ads on TV marketing the latest Windows 11 PCs as \u201cthe computer you can talk to.\u201d Microsoft tried to convince people to use Cortana on Windows 10 PCs a decade ago, and that effort ended in the Cortana app being shut down<\/a> on Windows 11 a couple of years ago.<\/p>\n

Mico is certainly a lot more capable than Clippy or Cortana, but Microsoft will still face many of the same challenges of trying to convince people that speaking to a PC or phone isn\u2019t weird. Just like Cortana and Clippy, Mico will also have its own Easter eggs in a renewed effort to get people to talk to an AI assistant.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s funny you mention Clippy; there is an Easter egg when you get to try Mico. If you poke Mico very very quickly, something special may happen,\u201d teases Andreou. \u201cWe all live in Clippy\u2019s shadow in some sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

Correction, October 23rd: A draft Microsoft blog post mentioned Mico would be available in the US, UK, and Canada at launch. It\u2019s only available in the US.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been nearly 30 years since Microsoft\u2019s Office assistant, Clippy, first graced our screens as an annoying paperclip.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235970,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,2577,44,1996,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-235969","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-microsoft","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-tech","16":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235969","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235969"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235969\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235969"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235969"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235969"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}