- Windows 11’s Copilot app has a new testing feature
- “PC Insights” provides an easy way to receive clear answers to hardware-related questions about your device and its specifications.
- While there are some concerns about privacy (and clutter), Microsoft has made it clear that Copilot needs permission to access your system and files.
Copilot is getting a new ability to answer questions about your PC’s hardware, allowing AI to mine relevant hardware details to do so – and while Microsoft is being cautious about privacy here, it’s unlikely to stop some level of paranoia.
Windows Latest reported the introduction of “PC Insights” for the Copilot app on Windows 11, which, as Microsoft explains, “allows customers to conversationally ask Copilot questions on their Windows PC and receive clear answers based on the status of their device without having to dig into system settings.”
This is currently an experimental feature, so still in testing, and an optional capability that you need to enable for it to be in play. Windows Latest notes that it’s rolling out gradually, but only in the US at the moment.
You can ask Copilot how much RAM you have, or how much storage space is left, or what your GPU is, as well as your current CPU usage level, and a whole bunch of similar component-related queries. You can ask questions about things as diverse as whether you have antivirus running or what the status of your laptop’s battery is, delving into some light troubleshooting if you wish.
To get its answers, the Copilot app connects to Windows APIs to scan your system, and the AI asks for permission to do so. You can allow it access to your PC’s hardware details once for this session only, or you can choose to “always allow” if you’re happy to give Copilot this access on a more permanent basis.
Analysis: fears of hallucinations and bloating
As always, this is AI, and as Microsoft notes, Copilot “may not always provide complete or accurate information,” especially during this testing phase. So if you get the chance to try PC Insights, keep a good sense of skepticism about the answers you get.
As Windows Latest makes clear, there’s also some irony in a Windows 11 user checking resource usage, perhaps due to system slowness, using the Copilot AI to run diagnostics when the app itself is using the best part of 1GB of RAM when it’s running in the background and doing nothing.
That doesn’t stop this new PC scanning feature from being useful, of course. Some of the backlash came from a place of disdain, as you might guess, with comments such as this Redditor’s: “Oh, hey, it’s like Task Manager, except instead of being lightweight and authoritative, it’s bloated and might lie to me.”
Of course, this is a feature intended for less savvy PC owners, not those who can easily understand at a glance what’s happening in Task Manager. Criticisms about the Copilot app’s bulkiness are pretty fair, because in its most recent incarnation, Microsoft has changed things up, so the app is essentially a standalone spin-off of the Edge browser.
Another concern is privacy and Copilot “snooping” on your machine, but as noted, there are clear permission requests and the new feature is strictly optional. You never have to approach information on PC if you don’t want to. It’s also worth noting that giving the Copilot app access permissions doesn’t mean it can read the actual contents of files, only their size (to assess storage issues, etc.).
At the moment this is purely an informational or troubleshooting feature, and if attempted diagnostics it may indicate problems with your PC, but will not fix them for you. However, it’s not hard to imagine where Microsoft could go with this, in terms of getting Copilot to implement fixes for some issues flagged by the AI. I’m talking about simple parameter changes rather than anything in-depth, and that’s always been the idea for Copilot (even if it hasn’t been realized to a large extent yet).
When we get AI agents in Windows 11 – and they will, make no mistake – this type of feature could turn into a full troubleshooting agent. The problem (pun not intended) is that the errors and hallucinations that the AI can make could be considerably more aggravating in this kind of scenario.
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