You Can Now Upload Files to Copilot on Windows 11; Here’s How
While Microsoft hurriedly replaced Cortana with Copilot, the Redmond giant is starting to add AI features that are actually useful. Besides chatting with Copilot on Windows 11, you can nowupload documents and filesfor analysis using AI. You could already upload images to Copilot, but file upload is new to Windows Copilot. This feature will let you find insights and extract key information from documents in a snap.
The best part is that you can drag and drop files into Copilot seamlessly and ask questions right away. There is also support forbuilt-in Code Interpreter, but it fails to execute some tasks like converting a DOC document to PDF, and so on.
Currently, I have got access to the feature in theCanary build of Edge(version 124.0.2457.0), but it’s also coming to Windows Copilot on the desktop, as discovered byLeopeva64onX. Microsoft is also holding anevent on March 21stwhere it will unveil an improved Copilot so stay tuned for an official announcement.
Besides that,Copilot is getting more personalwith Android integration, thanks to a leak we found on Samsung’s Galaxy Book4 series product page. And for the next bigWindows 11 24H2update, Microsoft is preparing Copilot to supportdeeper system integrationwith Windows 11 using Power Automate and Windows Context Copilot plugins.
With all that said, here is the file upload feature on Copilot in action.
Drag and Drop Files on Copilot on Windows 11
First of all, these are thefile formatssupported on Windows Copilot right now:
To begin my testing, Iuploaded a PDF fileon India’s AI regulation and asked Copilot to summarize it. Copilot successfully ingested the file and gave me key points without any sign of hallucination. Keep in mind that you should use Copilot in the “Creative mode” to use the GPT-4 model.
Next, I asked Windows Copilot toconvert the PDF to DOCformat. It fired up Code Interpreter but failed to execute the task for some reason.
After that, Iuploaded an Excel (XLS) fileof Chromebooks with their specifications. It analyzed the table inside the Excel file, intelligently compared various models of Chromebooks, and gave a correct response. Next, I asked it to create a new table for Chromebooks under $300 and Copilot dutifully generated a table. This can be so helpful for analyzing complex Excel documents.
To probe the file upload feature on Copilot further, Ithrew a Python fileand asked it to explain the code. Again, Copilot did a great job. It also rewrote the code in JavaScript.
Many such use cases can be unlocked with the ability to upload files on Copilot. You can throw documentation of coding libraries and it canaccurately find the relevant informationfrom the document and answer your query. The wide range of supported file formats indicates that both programmers and general users can use the feature to their full advantage.
Now, all I want is Copilot in Windows 11’s context menu. Just right-click on any file and ask Copilot to analyze the document, anywhere in the OS. That would be awesome, right? Having said all of that, keep in mind that all your uploaded documents can be used by Microsoft for training and improving the model so I would strongly recommendnot uploading personal fileson Copilot.
If you want to do it locally, you canrun a local LLM on your PCusingGPT4ALLwhich allows you to ingest documents in a simple GUI interface. Apart from that, you can check outPrivateGPTwhich lets you upload files locally.
So what do you think about Copilot’s new file upload feature? Let us know in the comment section below.
Arjun Sha
Passionate about Windows, ChromeOS, Android, security and privacy issues. Have a penchant to solve everyday computing problems.
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