A new Copilot AI feature in Edge can summarize videos (with caveats)

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft’s AI Copilot in the Edge browser can now generate text summaries of videos—with some limitations. According to Mikhail Parakhin, Microsoft’s CEO of advertising and web services, this feature only works on videos that have been pre-processed by Microsoft or have subtitles.

Parakhin explained that Copilot needs a text transcript of the video to create a summary. He said, "In order for it to work, we need to pre-process the video. If the video has subtitles—we can always fallback on that, if it does not and we didn't preprocess it yet—then it won’t work."

Copilot can also summarize video meetings and calls in Microsoft 365, but it requires audio transcription first. Similarly, Copilot on Microsoft Stream can summarize any video, but it needs users to generate a transcript.

The feature was demonstrated by designer Pietro Schirano, who posted a screen recording of Copilot summarizing a YouTube video about the GTA VI trailer. The video had subtitles, so Copilot was able to produce a summary with highlights and timestamps in seconds.

However, not all videos have subtitles or transcripts. Parakhin said that most publicly available videos (i.e. YouTube) should work.

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Microsoft Edge gets a new Bing AI chatbot sidebar

Microsoft's Bing AI-powered chatbot is now more accessible inside the Edge browser. It was initially only available in the dev versions of Edge, but it's now rolling out on the stable versions of the browser on Windows and macOS. I've already spotted it on my browser. It shows up as a Bing button on the top right corner of the browser. 

When you hover or click on the button, it'll bring up the Bing chatbot experience. You can then use the chat function from there. You can ask it questions or help you with tasks like generating text for emails, letters, blog posts, and more. But in this sidebar configuration, you can ask it to summarize what you're reading on the page, do comparisons, and more.

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Microsoft Edge tests the option to upscale web videos using AMD, NVIDIA GPUs

Screenshot: Microsoft

While NVIDIA video card owners can already upscale videos in both Chrome and Edge, Microsoft is helping those with an AMD board (or even NVIDIA) to upscale videos and remove artifacts. The company is testing a Video Super Resolution feature for Edge, which requires at least a GeForce RTX 20 series or a Radeon RX5700. This feature can help with improving the quality of an older YouTube video or help with saving bandwidth on capped data plans. 

There are some conditions for this feature to work, though. It's only available for Windows users. If you're using a laptop, it has to be plugged in. And the video you're watching isn't using a digital rights management system like PlayReady or Widevine. At present, you also need to force Edge to use your dedicated GPU (if your laptop has a hybrid graphics setup). Microsoft is working on automatic hybrid video support. Video Super Resolution is currently only available to a handful of Edge Canara users, but it's expected to come to more testers in the "coming weeks." Microsoft also plans to bring this feature to more GPUs, so your hardware might be compatible in the future. It's unclear when this feature will exit testing, but for now, we just know it's on the horizon.

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NVIDIA GeForce Now on Chrome, Edge browser supports 1440p at 120fps

New browser options for GeForce Now (Source: NVIDIA)

NVIDIA has just updated its game streaming service to add support for 1440p resolution at 120 frames per second in a Chrome or Edge browser. If you're part of the RTX 3080 tier, you can access the new browser gameplay option by simply tapping on 1440p on the GeForce Now web version. 

NVIDIA launched this membership tier last year to support streams of up to 1440p with 120fps on PCs and Macs or 4K HDR at 60fps on NVIDIA's Shield TV. But you can only access this feature if you use the dedicated Mac or Windows apps. The web version maxed out at 1080p at 60fps before.

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