Having invested so much time, money and effort in Copilot, it would seem obvious that Microsoft is not giving up on its AI-powered assistant despite receiving a lot of complaints and backlash.
Far from giving up on Copilot, Microsoft is making it even more feature-packed and capable, and the latest work shows that the company is looking to add screenshot functionality. Given the privacy concerns that Windows Recall caused, how will this be less controversial?
The way Microsoft describes the work in progress makes it sound somewhat similar to Google’s Circle to Search feature. While Google built this tool to help people conduct image-based searches, Microsoft’s intention with Copilot screenshots is to give users a way to more easily use on-screen content as the basis of a Copilot prompt.
A recent entry on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap about the tool and its development reads:
Microsoft Copilot (Microsoft 365): Take Screenshot in Copilot
Give users a fast, built‑in way to capture screenshots and include them in Copilot prompts, helping them communicate visual context more easily and receive more accurate, actionable assistance.
The appearance of this on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap tells us next to nothing about when Microsoft expects to ship this feature. While some areas of development at Microsoft run at lightning pace, it is not uncommon for certain projects to operate more slowly, and even for them to be abandoned altogether.
As such, we can only speculate about quite when Copilot will gain screenshot-taking capabilities, until such a time as we hear something more solid from Microsoft. There is also no word on just what sort of additional functionality this feature may have beyond taking a basic screenshot and using it as a Copilot prompt. Microsoft may well have more ideas in the pipelines but the company is saying nothing about it at the moment.
