Clippy, the famous Office suite assistant, has just made an unexpected return to Windows 11. Indeed, nostalgic developers have decided to give the little paperclip a second life… while adding ChatGPT to it!
He is one of the characters who have become cult over the years within the PC community. Launched in 1997, Clippy aka the little paperclip was none other than the virtual assistant incarnation of the Office suite. Sometimes adored, sometimes hated, Clippy remained active on our PCs until 2007, before taking a well-deserved retirement.
From, we are still waiting for a possible return of this figure of vintage Windows on modern versions of the Microsoft OS. The Redmond firm promised two years ago that Clippy would soon make its big comeback, but for now, nothing on the horizon. However, we have already had the right to a few appearances of Clippy within Microsoft Teams, then as an emoji in Office 365.
Clippy is back on Windows 11 and 10…
However, the developers of FireCube Studios have decided to rush the resurrection of Clippy. In effect, the virtual assistant is now available via a new free application on Windows 11 and 10 (downloadable from Microsoft Store and open-source on GitHub).
The principle remains the same: the little assistant can answer your questions directly from the OS desktop. However, there is a size difference. Because, Clippy has also taken the turn of AIwith full ChatGPT 3.5 integration.
With ChatGPT 3.5!
Still, it is difficult to see the benefits of this transition to artificial intelligence. The app, still in beta, was released just two days ago and at present, the problems are legion, starting with recurring crashes.
Another major drawback, it is necessary to be in possession of an OpenAI key to be able to take advantage of conversational AI with Clippy. On this point, the FireCube developers are currently working on a way to circumvent this restriction.
More improvements are planned in the near future like the ability to drag and/or resize Clippy. Finally, other characters will also be added like Microsoft Bob or the dog Rover (collector this one).
Source : TechRadar
