Xbox says Copilot on consoles provides "coaching," but it actually talks to you like a baby with a controller: "It's a bit of a grind, but hey, you're already on Torment 4"

Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant is arriving on "current-generation consoles" later this year, as Xbox announced during a Game Developers Conference 2026 panel attended by GamesRadar+, but a coinciding tech demo suggests the bot isn't ready for the responsibility.

Gaming AI at Xbox's partner group product manager Sonali Yadav shared at the Responsible Innovation for Gameplay Experiences lecture that Copilot should be able to help players seeking "coaching to improve a skill that matters to them," and to make sure "more players start to reach that threshold of feeling successful." It at least attempts to do that in example clips featuring Forza Horizon 5, Sea of Thieves, and Diablo 4 by also trying to change your diaper.

In the Sea of Thieves example, the player Microsoft named "WarlocksPWN" like a 2001 Law & Order cyberbullying victim wonders, hm, "It's my first time playing. How do I get to a ship?" If a human person asked me, another human person, this question, I might reply, "Hey, so if you play the game and follow its tutorial prompts, you will be able to learn all basic gameplay mechanics, including boarding and commanding a ship, yourself." But I would say that because I believe that people are capable of doing what they set out to do, and I have faith in the intelligence of the general population.

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Here's how Gaming Copilot will work on Xbox when it arrives later this year. According to Microsoft, 19 percent of early usage was just to chat with the AI as a companion. The guides are seemingly lifted without credit from the internet. It's unclear if that will change before console launch.

— @ethangach.bsky.social (@ethangach.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-03-20T15:18:05.380Z

Copilot does not. The bot manages to be patronizing and vague at the same time, and it advises WarlocksPWN to "just head down to the dock area," "hop on board, raise your anchor, and start figuring out the ropes." But this pointless hand-holding seems to be what WarlocksPWN needs. In Microsoft's Diablo 4 example, they somehow can't figure out how to open their Duriel's Hoard chest of rewards despite apparently defeating the boss Duriel on the highest difficulty, Torment 4.

Here comes the choo-choo train – Copilot begins spoonfeeding the player and says, "Ah. I see what's on your screen there, WarlocksPWN. To open Duriel's Hoard, you'll need those corrupted horns of Duriel that the prompt is asking for. Basically, you collect those horns by defeating Duriel himself in the Echo of Duriel boss fight. [...] So, it's a bit of a grind, but hey, you're already on Torment 4."

"That's pretty cool," Yadav comments after the video examples end. Note, too, that a 2025 MIT study suggests using AI assistants like Copilot shrivels your brain.

"AI is not a shiny new feature," Xbox AI lead says, and "our games industry has been building AI systems for decades" from cheat detection to pathfinding.