Windows 11 Copilot’s PC Insights: Real Diagnostics, 1 GB of Irony

Microsoft is testing a Windows 11 Copilot feature called PC Insights that lets the AI assistant read live system data, including CPU load, RAM usage, GPU specs, storage capacity, connected USB devices, battery health, and BIOS information, to answer questions in plain language. The rollout is gradual and currently limited to the United States. The catch: Copilot ships as a full web app bundled with its own private copy of Microsoft Edge and, according to Windows Latest testing, consumes close to 1 GB of RAM while sitting idle.

What happened

Detail	Fact
Feature name	PC Insights
Availability	Gradual rollout, United States only (as of July 2026)
Access model	Opt-in, read-only, permission required before each scan
Copilot idle RAM use	Up to 1 GB
Copilot architecture	Full web app with a private Microsoft Edge copy bundled
Data training policy	Personal files and system info not stored or used for training; conversation prompts and responses may be used

Windows Latest found references to PC Insights inside the Copilot app codebase and a Microsoft support document before the feature became publicly visible. Microsoft confirmed the feature to Windows Latest and described the rollout as slow and geographically staged.

PC Insights works by tapping Windows APIs to pull live device data. The system categories it can read include:

• CPU, RAM, and GPU usage in real time
• Total and available storage, plus folder sizes such as Downloads and Documents
• Connected USB devices, external drives, printers, and webcams
• Wi-Fi and Bluetooth state
• Battery health, antivirus status, BIOS version, and overall device health

File contents remain off-limits unless you explicitly grant access. Copilot can calculate folder sizes but cannot read what is inside those folders.

How the contextual answers work

The feature is designed to chain questions together. According to Microsoft’s support document, if you ask how much free storage space you have and Copilot reports 87 GB, you can then ask whether that is enough to install GTA V. Copilot would search the web, find that GTA V requires over 100 GB, note the 13 GB shortfall, and suggest cleaning up files. Microsoft frames this as a faster alternative to opening Task Manager, Settings, or File Explorer separately.

Example questions Microsoft lists as supported:

• “What graphics card do I have?”
• “Do I have enough space for a 100 GB game?”
• “What’s my current CPU usage?”
• “Is my antivirus running?”
• “How is my battery health?”
• “Is my printer online?”
• “How big is my Downloads folder?”

For now, Copilot cannot take corrective action. It is read-only. Microsoft has not announced a timeline for write or fix capabilities, though Windows Latest notes that could change.

What about privacy?

Microsoft’s stated position is that PC Insights is permission-gated. Copilot prompts you before accessing any device data, and the default setting is “Ask every time.” You can change this to “Always allow” if you prefer. According to Microsoft: “Your personal files and system info aren’t stored or used to train models.” Conversation data, meaning the prompts you type and the responses Copilot generates, may be used for model improvement depending on your account settings.

Why it matters

A system-aware AI assistant is genuinely useful on paper. Most users do not know how to read Task Manager, have no idea what their GPU model is, and would not think to check BIOS version before a driver update. Natural-language diagnostics lower that barrier. If the feature works reliably, it could reduce a class of basic IT support questions that small businesses currently pay someone to answer.

The privacy framing is worth watching, though. Microsoft already faced criticism for Recall, its screenshot-based memory feature. PC Insights is scoped more narrowly (no screenshots, no file contents), but it still normalizes the idea of an always-available AI with broad visibility into your hardware and connected devices. The opt-in model helps, but “Always allow” is one click away and easy to forget you set it.

If you are curious how AI assistants are being embedded into business workflows more broadly, our breakdown of Deutsche Telekom’s OpenAI partnership shows how deep these integrations are going at the enterprise level.

Our take

The feature idea is sound. Answering “can I install this game?” by actually checking your drive rather than guessing is exactly the kind of grounded, factual response AI assistants should give more often. The contextual follow-up chaining is a real improvement over one-shot Q&A.

But the execution has a visible problem. Copilot is built as a full web app that bundles its own private copy of Microsoft Edge, and it idles at close to 1 GB of RAM. Recommending that users rely on Copilot to tell them what is hogging system resources, while Copilot itself quietly consumes a gigabyte doing nothing, is a hard pitch. On a machine with 8 GB or 16 GB of RAM, that overhead is not trivial.

For businesses looking at AI integration on employee workstations, this is worth a controlled test before wide deployment. Check actual RAM headroom on your fleet before enabling Copilot, and review whether “Always allow” is the right default for your threat model. Read-only access today does not mean read-only access forever.

What to do about it

1. Check whether PC Insights has appeared in your Copilot sidebar. Open Copilot in Windows 11 and look for a “PC Insights” option or prompt it directly with one of the supported questions listed above.
2. Review the permission setting. The default “Ask every time” is the safer choice for most users. Only switch to “Always allow” if you have a specific workflow reason.
3. Monitor Copilot’s own RAM footprint. Open Task Manager and check how much memory the Copilot process is consuming. On machines with 8 GB or less, you may want to keep Copilot closed when not in use.
4. Check your Microsoft account privacy settings to understand whether your conversation history is being used for model training, and opt out if preferred.

Treat PC Insights as a useful diagnostic shortcut, not a replacement for understanding your own hardware.

Source: Bing News · Claude AI