Microsoft is implementing a major Windows 11 reset focused on improving performance, reliability, and user experience following widespread user complaints about system quality and AI integration. PCWorld reports that Copilot's presence will be significantly scaled back, removing it from apps like Notepad, Snipping Tool, and Photos due to user pushback against excessive AI features. Expected improvements include enhanced system stability, repositioned Taskbar, better Start menu functionality, and a more responsive overall experience with tangible progress visible in preview builds. Over the past few months, Microsoft senior executives have quietly made a promise to me directly, as well as to other journalists: They're going to improve Windows.

Can you imagine yourself having a conversation with Windows about what your PC is doing? Microsoft's Windows chief can, and is trying to build a future where those interactions are the norm. In an interview with Microsoft AI product manager Christiaan Brinkhoff, the chief of Microsoft's Windows Devices group, Pavan Davuluri, explained that the company is trying to work toward a future where you can access Windows pretty much anywhere via the cloud, then use AI to fine-tune what you're trying to accomplish. Microsoft described the conversation as "the next chapter of Windows," with an eye toward delivering the changes within the next few years. Davuluri described what he hoped the Windows team could accomplish from a strategic level, without targeting any future version of Windows with these goals in mind.

Now that we're a few years into Microsoft's obsession with AI and its Copilot assistant, it's clearer than ever that Windows 11's role is to show off the company's artificial intelligence prowess. At least, that's the message I took away from today's announcement that the Windows 11 2024 (version 24H2) update is now beginning to roll out. While the OS itself is getting a few new features, like long overdue File Explorer tweaks, Microsoft is far more eager to hype up new Copilot AI PC capabilities. There's "Click to Do," which triggers Copilot to assist you with whatever is on your screen, like removing an object in the Photos app, or summarizing a long article. It's seemingly easy to use -- just hold the Windows button down and click your target -- and Microsoft says it'll offer contextually relevant tips.

Qualcomm's exclusivity period on Copilot PCs is winding down. Microsoft confirmed on Tuesday that Intel's new 200V processors and AMD's Ryzen AI 300 series chips will add Copilot AI capabilities beginning in November. Copilot PCs include features like Live Captions (real-time subtitle generation, including translations), Cocreator in Paint (prompt-based image generation), Windows Studio Effects image editing (background blurring, eye contact adjustment and auto-framing) and AI tools in Photos. Of particular interest to gamers is Auto Super Resolution, an Nvidia DLSS competitor that upscales graphical resolution and refresh rates in real time without stunting performance. The AI PCs will also eventually include Recall, Microsoft's searchable timeline of PC activity.

What if you could run an entire Windows PC on a mobile Arm-based chip, bringing the power efficiency and thinner designs from smartphones and tablets to laptops? If you've been paying attention to Microsoft's PC strategy over the past two decades, this song probably sounds familiar. From the original Surface in 2012 (running Windows RT for Arm devices) to the recent Surface Pro 9 5G, Microsoft has chipped away at this dream, only to fail miserably every time. Now with its new Copilot PC initiative, which includes major upgrades in Windows for Arm systems and AI, Microsoft may finally have the answer to its mobile computing dreams. Microsoft's portable PC ambitions didn't start with the Surface line: You can trace it back to Windows CE and Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs.

Microsoft is bringing together its Windows experiences and its Windows devices teams to form one division, and it has appointed company veteran Pavan Davuluri with the task of leading it. As The Verge notes, Davuluri has been serving as head of the Surface team since last year, after Microsoft split up Windows experiences and devices following Panos Panay's departure. The company is expanding his role again after another departure, this time of former Windows experiences lead Mikhail Parakhin, who was in charge of the Bing search engine and its advertising business. In a letter written by Rajesh Jha and obtained by the publication, the company's technology chief said Parakhin "has decided to explore new roles." It's not quite clear if he's leaving Microsoft altogether or is still exploring for new opportunities within the company. But it's worth noting that he decided to vacate his role a week after Microsoft hired Deepmind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, who apparently asked Parakhin to report to him directly.

So far, Microsoft has show AI living in the cloud. AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm want AI to live on the PC, powered by their own processors. Does that pose a potential conflict? At AMD's "Advancing AI" presentation, where the company launched the Ryzen 8040 family of AI-enhanced mobile processors, Microsoft's chief Windows executive said that cloud AI and local AI could coexist. Microsoft not only supplies licenses for millions of Windows machines, but also sells Microsoft 365 subscriptions to even more -- 76 million consumer subscribers, as of the current third calendar quarter of 2023, with commercial growth of 14 percent on top of that.

There's a heated debate among the tech elite about whether artificial intelligence will destroy or enhance human life. Tesla founder Elon Musk has been sounding the alarms over AI for months, saying in September that AI will be the cause for World War III. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, meanwhile, counters that AI will be a benefit to the world. Bryan Borzykowski is a Toronto-based business and investments writer. He's contributed to the New York Times, CNBC, BBC Capital, CNNMoney and several other publications.