When you buy through affiliate links in our content, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn 
The new Xbox CEO, Asha Sharma has been hard at work dispelling gamers’ worries about the direction she’ll take with the company, including those about the potential inclusion of AI help.
When Sharma was first appointed, many were skeptical of her background in AI and whether she would be a suitable replacement for the legendary Phil Spencer. However, she’ll be the one to reverse course on one of the company’s least popular AI-related plans: Copilot.
This announcement comes on the heels of a separate incident last week, involving some unfounded assumptions about a new DRM feature that turned out to be much ado about nothing.
Sharma shuts down Copilot AI integration in Xbox
If you haven’t been following the rumors about Copilot on Xbox, it was revealed two years ago Microsoft was looking at incorporating the AI into Windows and Xbox to aid gamers through potentially difficult parts of games.
The initial demonstration of the technology showed how the AI could help with equipment crafting and enemy avoidance in Minecraft. Copilot would provide the user with recipes and advice on how to escape, serving as an in-game guide without the user needing to visit an external website for help.
At the time, Microsoft CEO of AI, Mustafa Suleyman, suggested that the integration would be “a magical experience: smart, intuitive, natural, and useful.”
Many users didn’t see things that way. Now, Sharma has officially put an end to the plan, cancelling development of the feature completely.
In an X post, Sharma stated “Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers,” which required promoting internally, while also stopping “development of Copilot on console.”
For those concerned about the unchecked addition of AI features to anything and everything, this is a huge win. Aside from the usual AI-related concerns, the proposed feature saw pushback on the grounds that part of the fun of games is figuring things out on one’s own.
Between this and her handling of last week’s DRM situation, Sharma seems to be doing a good job of getting gamers on her side. She’s working hard to showcase herself as ‘one of the people’ rather than an executive who’s out of touch with the end user.
