Microsoft tries another ugly trick to attract users, this time for Copilot

It appears Microsoft is once again playing dirty tricks to attract users to their own services. Earlier this year, they tried disguising Bing as Google to trick searchers, and now Neowin reports that they’re running a similar ploy for its Copilot AI chatbot assistant.

According to Neowin, if you search for an AI chatbot in the Bing search engine — including popular alternatives like ChatGPT and Gemini — you’ll see a special box with Microsoft’s own Copilot AI above the search results you’re expecting. If you actually submit a message in the box, then Copilot fully opens in a new tab.

Brad Chacos / Foundry

We gave it a try and were able to replicate it. Typing “chatgpt” into Bing gave us a special Copilot element in the search results, labeled as “Your AI companion” with a field to “Message Copilot.”

It’s possible that Microsoft is only running this trick in certain regions (possibly only in the US?) and/or for a limited number of users. If you don’t see it yourself, consider yourself lucky! For now…

Further reading: Copilot will no longer help you pirate Windows 11