Microsoft has rolled out a new feature to its artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot service, Copilot, which will allow users to control their Android 14 devices directly from their Windows 11-based PCs or laptops via Phone Link, according to a new report from Windows Latest.

Control Your Android Phones Via Copilot

For those unaware, Phone Link is a Windows service that allows you to connect your iPhone and Android device to your Windows PCs or laptops, making accessing your phone from your computer easier. This Windows app can be downloaded on your Android device from the Google Play Store.

Previously, Microsoft’s Phone Link app only allowed users to read specific text messages on their Android devices. But a new feature added as a server-side update to Copilot’s Phone Link plugin will now allow Android users to access contacts, find phone numbers saved on their phonebook, send and receive messages, set alarms, and even make calls from their desktop.

To use the service, you need to connect your Windows 11 PC or laptop to your Android 14 smartphone via the Phone Link app. To do this, visit Copilot web (copilot.microsoft.com) on your web browser, Open the Copilot hamburger menu, Click “Plugins,” and turn on “Phone Link.”

Once activated, you can ask Copilot to show recent text messages from your Android smartphone. It will instantly retrieve the latest text messages from your Android device in approximately one minute due to various connection steps.

Currently, the new feature is said to be in the beta phase and accessible only to those who have enrolled in the Copilot beta program. There is no timeline for when this feature will be rolled out to the general public.

SOURCEWindows Latest

 Microsoft has quietly rolled out an upgraded version of its Notepad plain text editor with spellcheck and autocorrect features to Windows 11 users.

Microsoft has quietly rolled out an upgraded version of its Notepad app

For those unaware, in March 2024, the Redmond giant added the spellcheck and autocorrect feature as part of an update to its Notepad app, which was introduced in 1983, around 41 years ago. This update was a preview release to Windows Insiders in the Canary and Dev Channels on Windows 11.

The upgraded Notepad app is now officially available for Windows 11 users. The latest update to Windows Notepad in Windows 11 brings the spellcheck feature, along with spelling suggestions. Not just this, it also incorporates autocorrect, which fixes errors in real-time as users type.

“With this update, Notepad will now highlight misspelled words and provide suggestions so that you can easily identify and correct mistakes. We are also introducing autocorrect, which seamlessly fixes common typing mistakes as you type,” the company announced in a blog post in March 2024.

According to the announcement, Notepad will automatically underline misspelled words in red and offer suggestions when you click, tap, or use the keyboard shortcut Shift + F10 on the misspelled word to see the correct spelling. Notepad’s autocorrect feature will immediately update the word with the selected suggestion.

Additionally, you can choose to ignore misspelled words in a single document or add them to the dictionary so they are not highlighted as a mistake again.

Further, the spelling and autocorrect feature in Notepad supports multiple languages. While this feature is enabled as the default setting for most files, it is turned off by default in log files and other file types typically associated with coding. However, they can be toggled on or off globally for certain file types on the Notepad settings page or temporarily for the current file in the context menu.

What are your thoughts on the enhanced Notepad app? Please let us know in the comments section below.

 Steve Huffman, the CEO of Reddit, has announced that Microsoft and other AI search engines will now have to pay if they want to continue data scrapping on the platform.

Earlier this year, Reddit reached an agreement with Google and OpenAI, allowing them to gain access to real-time content from Reddit’s data API to train their AI (artificial intelligence) models.

This latest move from Huffman is an attempt to end free data scraping on the popular platform, control how its data is used, and ensure its responsible use.

“Without these agreements, we don’t have any say or knowledge of how our data is displayed and what it’s used for, which has put us in a position now of blocking folks who haven’t been willing to come to terms with how we’d like our data to be used or not used,” Huffman said in an interview with The Verge.

He added, “Microsoft, Anthropic, and Perplexity for refusing to negotiate, saying it has been “a real pain in the ass to block these companies.

“We can no longer be completely open because we have to be very considerate of where our data ends up and what it’s used for. Any crawler that we don’t have a formal agreement with, we’re now blocking.”

In June 2024, Reddit implemented some blocks by updating its Robots Exclusion Protocol (robots.txt), which gives high-level instructions about how the company does and doesn’t allow Reddit to be crawled by third parties on its platform without authorization.

Those who want to access its data in search results must make a licensing deal with Reddit for content of any kind, including its use in web searches. It has already prevented Microsoft’s Bing search engine from accessing any comments and posts on its platform unless there is a formal agreement, news confirmed by Microsoft’s head of search Jordi Ribas on X.

While Reddit and Microsoft attempted to make a deal, their negotiations ended without agreement. A spokesperson from Reddit also said, “Anyone accessing Reddit content must abide by our policies, including those in place to protect redditors. We are selective about who we work with and trust with large-scale access to Reddit content.”

Currently, Google is the only search engine with access to Reddit content, with whom it signed a $60 million deal in February this year.

While Microsoft and Perplexity have yet to comment on The Verge’s report, Anthropic spokesperson Jennifer Martinez responded in a statement: “Reddit has been on our block list for web crawling since mid May, and we haven’t added any URLs from Reddit to our crawler since then. We respect robots.txt, the industry accepted signal for blocking web crawling.”