One of the strengths of local AI is its ability to filter out unwanted noise, and a couple of new Windows features Microsoft is testing take advantage of that. One of them will be rolled out to Copilot PCs that use Intel processors first, breaking Microsoft's streak of tying new features to Windows on Qualcomm Snapdragon processors. The feature promises to correct grammar and punctuation, as well as to get rid of what's known as "filler words:" the "you know," "um," and "well," words that many people add as they internally parse their thoughts into a coherent sentence. The other new feature is a key addition for webcams, as well. If you own a Copilot PC, you may have noticed Windows Studio Effects kick in while using the webcam: the webcam automatically crops in on your face, "zooming" to frame it in the picture.

Microsoft's controversial Windows Recall has now been generally released, and it poses as much of a risk to your privacy as it could be a boon to your productivity. Recall is just one of several new features that either have or will be arriving on Copilot PC, Microsoft said Friday. Recall, Windows' improved semantic search, Live Captions, Cocreator, and Restyle Image and Image Creator within Photos are now all available for Copilot PCs that include Qualcomm Snapdragon CPUs as well as PCs with qualifying processors from AMD and Intel. A few features -- Click to Do, Live Captions, and Voice Access -- are available for Copilot PCs running on Snapdragon, but support for AMD and Intel chips isn't quite available. For Microsoft, the release of these AI-powered features are cause for celebration, finally delivering on promises of an AI-powered world that the company first made a year ago. But in the weeks and months since Microsoft first announced Recall, a darker side of its potential has emerged.

As artificial intelligence becomes more and more prevalent modern day computing, Microsoft's new Copilot PCs bring powerful AI capabilities right to your fingertips. Equipped with specialized hardware and advanced software, these devices promise a faster, smarter experience. In this article, we'll explore what makes Copilot PCs stand out from the rest. To ensure that the advanced AI functions can be executed quickly and smoothly, Copilot PCs must meet certain hardware requirements. The most important criterion is the presence of a special neural processor (aka the NPU).

I don't use a Windows Copilot PC as a daily driver, though I have several in my office. But there's one absolutely critical Copilot feature that forces me to swap out my current laptop, attach a Copilot PC to my docking station, and boot it up. Very few people have bought a Copilot PC in the last year. So these features, which are currently locked to Copilot PCs and their NPU, aren't well known: Windows Recall; Paint's Cocreator, Generative Erase, Object Select, and Sticker Generator; Click-to-Do; Photos' Super Resolution, Relight and Restyle Image; the intelligent search features within the Settings menu; Windows Studio Effects; and Live Captions. My editor assumed I would prefer the last feature, Live Captions, probably because it's both useful and cool.

A year ago, Microsoft hyped Copilot PCs as the next big thing. Twelve months later, it's hard not to see them as one of the tech industry's more significant flops. The question is whether they'll stay that way. Many Copilot PCs began shipping on June 18, 2024, about a month after Microsoft announced the program at the company's headquarters a month earlier. Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, and Microsoft's own Surface division committed to shipping Copilot PCs, whose centerpiece was a processor with an embedded Neural Processing Unit -- the engine of AI -- capable of 40 trillion operations per second, or TOPS.

Should Microsoft and the PC industry have paid more attention to the GPU during the development of AI and Copilot PCs? After a year's time waiting for Copilot PCs (and their newfangled "Neural Processing Units" to take off, I can't help but wonder. Microsoft launched the Copilot PC initiative on May 20, 2024, and began shipping them on June 18. Since then, Microsoft has supported Copilot PCs with a handful of features, rolling them out first for PCs with the Qualcomm Snapdragon chips inside and then later for PCs powered by Intel Core Ultra Series 2 chips and the AMD Ryzen AI 300 processor. Qualcomm is essentially blameless, delivering a potent PC processor with most AI capabilities and long battery life.

A few days ago, Microsoft announced via the Windows Insider blog some new AI features and improvements for the Photos app. Among the new features is "Relight," which lets you adjust the lighting in a photo by placing up to three virtual light sources that can each be adjusted for color, intensity, and direction. There are also several built-in preset styles for quicker adjustments. With Relight, you can use the power of AI to dramatically change the mood, tone, and appearance of any photo. However, you'll need a Snapdragon-powered Copilot PC to take advantage of this feature right now.

CPUs and GPUs are old news. These days, the cutting edge is all about NPUs, and hardware manufacturers are talking up NPU performance. The NPU is a computer component designed to accelerate AI tasks in a power-efficient manner, paving the way for new Windows desktop applications with powerful AI features. All PCs will eventually have NPUs, but at the moment only some laptops have them. Here's everything you need to know about NPUs and why they're such a hot topic in the computer industry right now.

Microsoft announced a series of upcoming new features for Copilot PCs and Windows 11. One of the most compelling updates for Copilot PCs is agent, which provides on-device AI assistance for adjusting a PC's settings. Some of the example tweaks Microsoft gave for this application are issues such as "how to control my PC by voice" and "my mouse pointer is too small." Not only can the agent answer these types of queries, but if the necessary permissions are granted, the AI can also make the requested changes for a user. The blog post specifies that only questions in English are "initially" supported, which hints that more languages will be added at a later date.

It's been one future that sci-fi has promised since Star Trek. Microsoft now says that that future is arriving, at least within a small corner of Windows 11. Microsoft is promising that you'll be able to use natural language to change aspects of your Windows 11 Settings menu, and Windows will go out and make those changes for you using "agents," or small bits of AI that will work on your behalf -- at least if you own a Copilot PC with an AI-accelerating NPU onboard. Microsoft has begun to use its Surface devices as a showcase for its latest software, and the new 13-inch Surface Laptop and 12-inch Surface Pro are no exception. They'll serve as launch vehicles for Windows Recall, semantic search, and Click-to-Do, but also brand new features like agentic AI and relighting features for Photos, object editing and sticker generation for Paint, and more.