Microsoft's Copilot for Gaming arrives in beta – how to try it on your phone

Have you ever been playing a video game and found yourself helplessly stuck, racking your brain trying to remember a certain move and wishing some kind of oracle would appear to show you the way? Wish no more — AI is here to help.

This week, Microsoft rolled out a beta version of Copilot for Gaming, an AI chatbot the company describes as “the ultimate gaming sidekick.”

Also: Copilot’s Coding Agent brings automation deeper into GitHub workflows

While it’s still being developed, this early version allows gamers to ask a wide range of questions via text or voice prompts about a particular game or their overall performance, and the system will provide helpful tips and feedback.

Your personal gaming assistant

Think of Copilot for Gaming as a blend between a virtual strategist and a tutor: it’s there to help you get past snags you might hit in the course of playing a particular game, and to step up your skill set as a whole over time.

When answering a text or voice question, Copilot will reference your personal Xbox activity profile while simultaneously retrieving relevant information from Bing search if necessary.

Also: 8 ways I use Microsoft’s Copilot Vision AI to save time on my phone and PC

Like other versions of Copilot, Microsoft is marketing its new feature as a tool to help users cut back on unnecessarily wasted time (the ten minutes it might take to remember how to craft a sword in Minecraft, for example) so they can focus on the more engaging, rewarding aspects of the task at hand.

The beta version of Copilot for Gaming is now available through the Xbox app for iOS and Android devices in the US, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, and some other select regions, all of which can be viewed here. Microsoft will expand that list in the future, according to the company. Android owners can download the app directly from the Google Play Store. Those with Apple devices, on the other hand, will have to sign up via the company’s TestFlight service; spots are limited and currently full, meaning only those who signed up early will have access to the beta feature.

You can also provide feedback on the new feature — and thereby help shape its evolution over time — by selecting “Give Feedback” beneath the “More Options” menu in the app’s top-left corner. You can also simply mark the chatbot’s responses with a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down icon.

Copilots for one and all

Initially launched as Bing Chat, Microsoft introduced Copilot in early 2023, positioning it as an AI-powered assistant that could remember individual user information, navigate seamlessly across Microsoft’s family of apps, and boost human productivity. (Picture Clippy, but actually helpful.)

Also: Your Outlook inbox is about to get several Copilot AI upgrades for free – here’s what’s new

Copilot was built upon GPT-4, the large language model powering OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Microsoft has been a major investor in OpenAI since 2019, which in turn has propelled it to the vanguard of the current AI boom.

(Disclosure: Ziff Davis, ZDNET’s parent company, filed an April 2025 lawsuit against OpenAI, alleging it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.)

Like its biggest competitors in Silicon Valley, Microsoft has been working to embed generative AI services across all of its platforms and services. Copilot for Gaming is just the latest step toward achieving that mission.

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