Microsoft is rolling out a major Copilot upgrade for its Edge browser, letting the AI assistant pull information from every tab you have open. According to The Verge AI, you can now start a conversation with Copilot and ask it to compare products across tabs, summarize the articles you’re reading, or answer questions about what’s on your screen. Microsoft says users can pick and choose which experiences to enable, leaving off the ones they don’t want.
This is a meaningful shift in how browsers handle context. Instead of treating each tab as an island, Edge is turning the entire browsing session into a single workspace the AI can reason over.
What’s launching in Edge
- Cross-tab Copilot chat. The chatbot can now read across all open tabs to compare products, summarize articles, and answer questions about whatever you’re looking at.
- Study and Learn mode. A new AI-powered feature that turns any article into a study session or interactive quiz, aimed at students and self-learners.
- Tabs-to-podcast tool. Edge can now convert your open tabs into AI-generated podcasts, a direct nod to what Google’s NotebookLM popularized.
- AI writing assistant. A helper pops up when you start typing into any webpage, offering suggestions as you write.
- Browsing history access. With permission, Copilot can tap into your history to deliver answers Microsoft describes as more “relevant, high-quality.”
- Long-term memory. Both desktop and mobile versions get persistent memory, so Copilot tailors responses based on your previous conversations.
- Redesigned new tab page. Combines chat, search, and navigation in one view, plus the Journeys feature that uses AI to sort your browsing history into revisitable categories.
- Mobile screen sharing. The Edge mobile app now lets you share your screen with Copilot and talk through questions about what you’re seeing.
What’s being retired
Microsoft is sunsetting Copilot Mode, which had similar tab-reading capabilities but also included agentic features like booking reservations on your behalf. Those agentic abilities have been folded into the company’s separate “Browse with Copilot” tool, as detailed in The Verge AI.
How this stacks up
The push lands in a crowded field. Google has been weaving Gemini into Chrome, Perplexity launched its Comet browser, and OpenAI is reportedly working on its own browser. Microsoft’s bet is that Edge can win by making Copilot the connective tissue across everything you have open, not just a sidebar widget you occasionally talk to.
The podcast feature in particular reads as a direct response to NotebookLM’s viral moment last year. By baking that capability into the browser itself, Microsoft removes a step from the workflow.
The privacy angle
Microsoft is clearly aware of the optics. The company says users will see “clear visual cues” whenever Copilot is active, “so you know when it’s taking an action, helping, listening, or viewing.” The opt-in framing for browsing history access and the granular controls over which experiences to enable suggest Microsoft learned from earlier backlash around Recall.
Still, handing an AI access to every tab, your full history, and a long-term memory of past conversations is a significant trust ask. Whether users embrace it or recoil will likely depend on how transparent those visual cues actually are in practice.
What’s next
The rollout positions Edge as one of the most AI-saturated mainstream browsers on the market. The real test is whether cross-tab reasoning becomes a habit users rely on, or another feature that gets toggled off after the novelty fades. More details are available at the original source.