It’s been nearly 30 years since Microsoft’s 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. The technology still wasn’t quite there a decade ago, but now Microsoft is ready to try again with Mico, a new character for Copilot’s voice mode.
“Clippy walked so that we could run,” 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 “pico”) 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’s voice mode, where you’ll also have the option to turn the bouncing orb off.
“You can see it, it reacts as you speak to it, and if you talk about something sad you’ll see its facial expressions react almost immediately,” explains Andreou. “All the technology fades into the background, and you just start talking to this cute orb and build this connection with it.”
Mico will only be available in the US, UK, and Canada 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’re working on.
Microsoft is also adding a Learn Live mode to Mico that will turn the character into a Socratic tutor that “guides you through concepts instead of just giving answers.” It even uses interactive whiteboards and visual cues, and looks like it’s targeted at students preparing for finals or anyone trying to practice a new language.
Mico is all part of a goal to give Copilot an identity, as Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman alluded to earlier this year. “Copilot will certainly have a kind of permanent identity, a presence, and it will have a room that it lives in, and it will age,” said Suleyman in July.
Mico also forms a key part of Microsoft’s new initiative to get people to talk to their computers. The software maker is running ads on TV marketing the latest Windows 11 PCs as “the computer you can talk to.” 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 on Windows 11 a couple of years ago.
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’t 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.
“It’s 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,” teases Andreou. “We all live in Clippy’s shadow in some sense.”