When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Is Windows' Copilot button doomed to the fate of the Cortana key? From Cortana to Windows Copilot, history says new shortcut keys rarely stick. When Microsoft's Copilot key first poofed into existence, I tilted my head and thought . Does anyone remember the Cortana key?

MSI's latest Cubi NUC AI 2MG mini PC is as much smart speaker or laptop as it is a small, compact, desktop NUC: It boasts a dedicated hardware Copilot button as well as a dedicated fingerprint reader, and you can talk to it, too. Starting at 899, MSI's little mini PC is also Copilot qualified, with either a Core Ultra 9 288V or Core Ultra 7 258V chip inside. Both are Core Ultra Series 2 "Lunar Lake" chips. The hardware design, however, is something special. This isn't the first mini PC with a dedicated Copilot button -- that was the Asus NUC 14 Pro AI, launched at the 2025 edition of CES. However, this is the first mini PC that I can recall with a dedicated fingerprint reader underneath the power button, a feature normally associated with laptops like the Samsung Galaxy series.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Microsoft, like most other major tech companies, is cramming as much artificial intelligence as it can into its products. It's shown up in Microsoft Edge, in the Office suite, and even in the most basic programs on the operating system, such as Notepad and Paint. It's difficult to get away from, but you're not obliged to use it. If you'd rather you didn't have AI assistants regularly interrupting you, or you want to rely on your own abilities to put one word in front of another, there are ways of disabling and hiding the AI.

Microsoft's Copilot test within Microsoft Photos probably won't be part of its redemption arc. While the company is testing a Copilot button within Photos, it arguably doesn't do really…anything? Anything that you can't find anywhere else, let's say. Microsoft said Monday that it's rolling out a beta of the Photos app with a Copilot button that will appear at the top of the screen. Here's what it does, according to Microsoft: If you'd like tips on how to take better photos, there are numerous tutorials around the web, both in video and in text form.

This year everything is "AI," whatever that means. Every new computer, game, software service, and soft-serve ice cream machine is apparently imbued with digital sentience, at least according to its branding. But when it comes to laptops and desktops, Microsoft has a very specific definition of "AI PC." Surprise…it's mostly branding. According to a presentation from Intel on Tuesday, which weirdly debuted Microsoft's "requirements for an AI PC," vendors will need three specific components if they want to advertise their new machines as such. One, "NPU, CPU, and GPU powered silicon."