If the era of the AI PC is here, Microsoft and Windows 11 are leading the charge. It's worth stepping back and figuring out where everyone is headed. Just two days after Intel's Pat Gelsinger helped make the case for integrated AI on PCs with new AI-infused Core Ultra "Meteor Lake" processors, Microsoft unveiled new Surface hardware and its upcoming Windows 11 feature update at an event in New York. Windows 11's big fall 2023 update (which still doesn't have a formal name, yet), will be led by Copilot, formerly known as Windows Copilot. Now, everywhere that Microsoft has sprinkled AI inside Windows (from Windows to Edge and other places) will be known just as Copilot. And AI is everywhere within Windows 11 and its apps now.

A branch of artificial intelligence called machine learning is all around us. It's employed by Facebook to help curate content (and target us with ads), Google uses it to filter millions of spam messages each day, and it's part of what enabled the OpenAI bot to beat the reigning Dota 2 champions last year in two out of three matches. There are seemingly endless uses. Adding one more to the pile, Microsoft and Intel have come up with a clever machine learning framework that is surprisingly accurate at detecting malware through a grayscale image conversion process. Microsoft detailed the technology in a blog post (via ZDNet), which it calls static malware-as-image network analysis, or STAMINA.

Microsoft and Intel have partnered up in an effort to develop a new kind of malware detection. The project, called Static Malware-as-Image Network Analysis (STAMINA), is a joint effort by the tech giants to develop a software that sniffs out malicious code by converting it into greyscale images that can be assessed by utilizing deep-learning. Specifically, STAMINA converts one-dimensional malware bits into two-dimensional greyscale images and then'looks' at the images for patterns that may indicate specific types of malicious code using computer vision software designed to analyze images. One the image is assembled, STAMINA then resizes it into a smaller dimension to make it easier to view. This compressions, according to researchers helps avoid needing the software to assess billions of pixels - which would likely slow the process - and does not negatively affect its ability to identify malware.

Microsoft and Intel have a novel approach to classifying malware: visualizing it. They're collaborating on STAMINA (Static Malware-as-Image Network Analysis), a project that turns rogue code into grayscale images so that a deep learning system can study them. The approach converts the binary form of an input file into a simple stream of pixels, and turns that into a picture with dimensions that vary depending on aspects like file size. A trained neural network then determines what (if anything) has infected the file. ZDNet noted that the AI is trained on the huge amount of data Microsoft has collected from Windows Defenders installations. The technology doesn't need full-size, pixel-by-pixel recreations of viruses, which makes sense when large malware could easily translate to gigantic pictures.

WinHEC (Windows Hardware Engineering Community) is Microsoft's string of conferences designed to get hardware developers jazzed about developing for the Windows platform. Microsoft's goal, like anyone with an ecosystem, is to get their fair share of resources committed to their platform. At this year's WinHEC 2016 in Shenzhen today, Microsoft laid out what could possibly be the biggest look into the future of the personal computing platform we have seen in a while. Part of that has to do with the upcoming Creator's Update that is coming to Windows 10 next year that will enable new and more immersive user experiences. Microsoft brought both Intel and Qualcomm on stage to talk about the developments from each of the companies and how each of them is working with Microsoft to enable new experiences to users with Windows.