It's impossible to ignore the rapid rise in the capabilities of artificial intelligence tools in recent months. Microsoft hasn't been shy in stuffing Windows full of AI features: Windows computers now come with a dedicated key for launching Copilot, Microsoft's AI assistant, which has been integrated into the operating system. We'll guide you through everything you can use Copilot for on your Windows laptop or desktop, and how you can get it up and running. We'll also explain the difference between Copilot and a Copilot PC, which is a label you might have spotted if you've been shopping for a Windows computer lately. When it comes to the Copilot assistant inside Windows, it's very similar to the Copilot app on the web.

Microsoft's best and worst of 2024, not surprisingly, centered around AI. When Microsoft was trying to force Copilot upon us, it didn't go so well. But when it used AI to enhance what was already working, the results were much more successful. For the last few years (2021, 2022, and 2023) we've recapped what I call Microsoft's wins, fails, and WTF moments: Microsoft's highs, lows, and the moments where you wondered what in the world that this company was up to. We're not going to try and piece together the company's enterprise strategy (Azure and Copilot, basically).

In the last two years, Microsoft has invested a lot of money in the ChatGPT inventor Open AI and in its own AI developments. Since then, Microsoft has been equipping more and more programs with artificial intelligence, above all the Edge browser and Office programs. But AI is also finding its way into Windows. In this article, we present the new AI functions in Windows, the Windows apps, and Microsoft 365. Microsoft's AI engine Copilot has been part of the operating system since Windows 11 23H2 for U.S. users, and is available via the Copilot app in the Microsoft Store for others.

Live Captions are more useful than I thought they'd be. They not only caption any video you have (like a video of a wedding or graduation, say) but they will also translate any audio -- whether that's on the screen or via the tablet microphone. Just make sure you enable that in the app's settings.

Microsoft's Paint app now boasts not just one, but two AI art tools -- Image Creator and Cocreator -- and boy, are they something. First things first: Microsoft Cocreator, the scaled-down version of Microsoft's Bing Image Creator/Microsoft Designer, is still the engine of AI art in Paint. Type in a prompt, and it will create a scene according to your description and style. Microsoft Cocreator was renamed to Image Creator, and Microsoft Cocreator is now an entirely different tool. The king is dead; long live the king.

Microsoft Paint is getting new image generation powers with a new tool called Cocreator. Powered by "diffusion-based algorithms," Cocreator can generate images based on text prompts as well as your own doodles in the Paint app. The company has been experimenting with AI image generation in Paint for a while, and early versions of Cocreator have been available to developers and Windows Insiders since the fall. But with the introduction of CoPilot PCs, the feature is now official. During a demo at its Surface event, the company showed off how Cocreator combines your own drawings with text prompts to create an image. There's also a "creativity slider" that allows you to control how much you want AI to take over compared with your original art.

To date, PC vendors have shipped AI PCs. On Monday, Microsoft announced the next step in the AI PC's evolution, the Copilot PC, and announced AI-powered Windows 11 features like Recall. "The pursuit has always been about how to build computers that understand us, instead of having us having to understand computers, and I feel like we really are close to that breakthrough," said Satya Nadella, Microsoft's chief executive, in a briefing with reporters on Microsoft's campus. A Copilot PC combines local, on-device AI with cloud AI, according to Microsoft, to provide a range of services. Some of the new laptops shipping with the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors will be classified as Copilot PCs, taking advantage of the NPU found within both chips.

Microsoft is significantly expanding the functions of Paint in Windows 11. The app is also getting a new version. The outdated program is to become a modern image editor that also contains AI functions. In the future, you will be able to use the OpenAI-LLM Dall-E directly in Windows 11 and in Paint. The new functions are also available after installing the Microsoft Paint app from the App Store.

Microsoft is injecting a ton of generative AI-powered features into Windows 11, but it's not all about the Copilot assistant. The company has started to update a string of apps with new AI functions, including Paint, Clipchamp, Snipping Tool and Photos. Microsoft released an update for Windows 11 2023, known as 23H2, on October 31. That update expanded access to Copilot and other AI features. Microsoft is rolling out the AI updates gradually, so you may not have access to everything just yet.

The 32-year-old is the only person to have won four World Poker Tour titles and has earned more than $7 million at tournaments. Despite his expertise, he learned something new this spring from an artificial intelligence bot. Elias was helping test new soft ware from researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Facebook. He and another pro, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, each played 5,000 hands over the internet in six-way games against five copies of a bot called Pluribus. At the end, the bot was ahead by a good margin.