- Microsoft is trying to promote its Copilot AI in the Edge browser
- When people visit ChatGPT or Perplexity, they may see a “Try Copilot” button
- This activates Copilot in the Edge sidebar, and the idea is to steal traffic from these rival AI services.
Microsoft’s latest idea to promote its services is an attempt to get people who use ChatGPT or Perplexity AI to try Copilot.
Windows Latest reports that this is happening to those using Microsoft Edge. When you visit the ChatGPT or Perplexity websites in the Microsoft browser, a button appears on the far right of Edge’s web address bar prompting you to “Try Copilot” (with a small Copilot icon next to it).
It’s relatively subtle, by Microsoft standards, but visible enough, and if you click on it, Edge will open Copilot in its sidebar. Obviously the hope is that it uses Microsoft’s AI instead of ChatGPT or Perplexity and therefore Microsoft is trying to steal traffic here.
I tried to open these two rival AI websites in my Edge browser and, just as Windows Latest promised, this button appeared in the URL bar. Curiously, it didn’t appear the first time I went to the ChatGPT site, but it did appear on the second visit.
Analysis: Hello ChatGPT: how can I stop Copilot from bothering me?
This seems to be happening with ChatGPT and Perplexity (plus Deepseek, the Chinese AI), but notably not with Google’s Gemini AI, which seems strange, since Microsoft has no qualms about trying to warn Edge users not to download Chrome, as we’ve seen in the past, and that’s still true today.
In fact, navigate to the Chrome download site in Edge and you’ll get a full popup, not just a little icon, that will try to discourage you from defecting to Google. He explains that Edge uses the same technology as Chrome, namely the Chromium engine, but with the “extra trust of Microsoft,” whatever that means.
So, these kinds of nudges are quite common for Microsoft’s browser, and in fact, in the interest of fairness, Google resorts to the same kind of online cajoling in the opposite direction.
In any case, this promotion of AI is nothing new. After all, we’ve seen this sort of thing before with Microsoft trying to hijack a Bing search for rival AI services and redirect people to Copilot AI in Edge. And given Microsoft’s overall big push with AI, which is now becoming very obvious with the latest developments in Windows 11, it’s really not surprising to see more of this type of activity.
That doesn’t make it any less disappointing, however, as Microsoft seems to be getting more and more strict with all of its promotional tricks on Windows and Edge. That suggests the company has evidence that this type of nudge works, but for me, it’s just a nuisance and makes me less likely to use any given product. Edge, Copilot, or other Microsoft services should stand on their own merits (and in fact, the irony is that Edge does, since it’s our current pick for best web browser).
By the way, I asked ChatGPT if it was aware of Microsoft Edge’s behavior while visiting its site, and as expected, the AI acknowledged the reports about it, although it remained relentlessly neutral in terms of its overall tone. Interestingly, ChatGPT suggested disabling the Copilot button (on the right side of the address bar) to get rid of this particular “Try Copilot” nudge, and would you believe this worked for me? With the main Copilot button disabled, I no longer saw Microsoft’s annoyance in the address bar (at least in my brief test).
If you’re wondering how to disable that Copilot button, in Edge’s address bar, type the following to access this part of the browser settings:
edge://settings/appearance/copilotAndSidebarAt the bottom of the “Application Specific Settings” panel, click on “Copilot” and where it says “Show the Copilot button in the toolbar”, disable it. You won’t have a Copilot button anymore, and hopefully you won’t see any Copilot-related suggestions in Edge’s address bar, or at least less so.
