Summary
- Microsoft’s new widget redesign adds Copilot summaries to the news feed – faster and AI-driven content.
- Users have control over what they see – they can upvote, downvote, and block sources in the AI-generated news.
- The widgets panel will no longer open news articles in a new browser window; they open within the panel.
What are your thoughts on Windows 11’s widgets? Some people love using them, and for others, they’re more of a take-them-or-leave-them sort of thing. And over the past month or so, we’ve seen Microsoft adding new features to the widgets panel to make it a little better.
However, I can imagine that some people aren’t going to like the newest addition Microsoft is testing out. If you’re wondering why the Redmond giant hasn’t yet squeezed Copilot into the widgets panel somehow, then you may be happy (or unhappy) to hear that it finally managed to find a way.
Related
The new Windows 11 Beta update makes widgets better than ever before
Getting the daily news has never been easier.
As spotted by Windows Central, Microsoft is testing out a new way to get people reading the news. It’s achieving this by replacing the old MSN News feed with a new Copilot-powered one. This feed will automatically register your favorite topics and use that to create a digestible summary of everything going on right now.
Windows Central notes that this new feed is a lot faster than the MSN one, and when you click on a headline, it will still open up on the MSN website as normal. It just seems like Microsoft is handing off the task of creating clickable content to AI to drive traffic to its website.
Fortunately, it does seem like Microsoft still gives you control over what you see in the feed. If the AI manages to pull up a topic you like the sound of, you can give it an upvote. Similarly, you can vote down anything that doesn’t match your interests. And if a particular publication is really bugging you, you can tell Copilot to stop showing you news articles from it. Also, the new widgets panel will stop opening any news articles you click on from opening in a new browser window; instead, they’ll open within the widgets panel.
Windows Central believes the update should roll out to more people “over the coming weeks,” and when it does, it’ll be interesting to see how refined this feature is. After all, AI is known to hallucinate facts that aren’t real, and it doesn’t seem like AI companies have managed to totally squash them (if they ever can). The last thing Microsoft needs is an AI summary that gets all the facts wrong. Either way, it seems that Microsoft’s Copilot is here to stay, and if your favorite Microsoft-developed app hasn’t gotten AI integration yet, it seems like it’s more a case of “if” rather than “when.”