copilot

win+c,-windows’-most-cursed-keyboard-shortcut,-is-getting-retired-again

Win+C, Windows’ most cursed keyboard shortcut, is getting retired again

copilot, Google, Tech, Windows 10, windows 10 22h2, Windows 11, windows 11 24h2 / /

What job will Win+C lose next? —

Win+C has been assigned to some of Windows’ least successful features.

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A rendering of the Copilot button.

Enlarge / A rendering of the Copilot button.

Microsoft

Microsoft is all-in on its Copilot+ PC push right now, but the fact is that they’ll be an extremely small minority among the PC install base for the foreseeable future. The program’s stringent hardware requirements—16GB of RAM, at least 256GB of storage, and a fast neural processing unit (NPU)—disqualify all but new PCs, keeping features like Recall from running on all current Windows 11 PCs.

But the Copilot chatbot remains supported on all Windows 11 PCs (and most Windows 10 PCs), and a change Microsoft has made to recent Windows 11 Insider Preview builds is actually making the feature less useful and accessible than it is in the current publicly available versions of Windows. Copilot is being changed from a persistent sidebar into an app window that can be resized, minimized, and pinned and unpinned from the taskbar, just like any other app. But at least as of this writing, this version of Copilot can no longer adjust Windows’ settings, and it’s no longer possible to call it up with the Windows+C keyboard shortcut. Only newer keyboards with the dedicated Copilot key will have an easy built-in keyboard shortcut for summoning Copilot.

If Microsoft keeps these changes intact, they’ll hit Windows 11 PCs when the 24H2 update is released to the general public later this year; the changes are already present on Copilot+ PCs, which are running a version of Window 11 24H2 out of the box.

Changing how Copilot works is all well and good—despite how quickly Microsoft has pushed it out to every Windows PC in existence, it has been labeled a “preview” up until the 24H2 update, and some amount of change is to be expected. But discontinuing the just-introduced Win+C keyboard shortcut to launch Copilot feels pointless, especially since the Win+C shortcut isn’t being reassigned.

The Copilot assistant exists on the taskbar, so it’s not as though it’s difficult to access, but the feature is apparently important enough to merit the first major change to Windows keyboards in three decades. Surely it also justifies retaining a keyboard shortcut for the vast majority of PC keyboards without a dedicated Copilot key.

People who want to continue to use Win+C as a launch key for Copilot can do so with custom keyboard remappers like Microsoft’s own Keyboard Manager PowerToy. Simply set Win+C as a shortcut for the obscure Win+Shift+F23 shortcut that the hardware Copilot key is already mapped to and you’ll be back in business.

Win+C has a complicated history

Win+C always seems to get associated with transient, unsuccessful Windows features like Charms and Cortana.

Enlarge / Win+C always seems to get associated with transient, unsuccessful Windows features like Charms and Cortana.

Andrew Cunningham

The Win+C keyboard shortcut actually has a bit of a checkered history, having been reassigned over the years to multiple less-than-successful Windows initiatives. In Windows 8, it made its debut as a shortcut for the “Charms” menu, part of the operating system’s tablet-oriented user interface that was designed to partially replace the old Start menu. But Windows 10 retreated from this new tablet UI, and the Charms bar was discontinued.

In Windows 10, Win+C was assigned to the Cortana voice assistant instead, Microsoft’s contribution to the early-2010s voice assistant boom kicked off by Apple’s Siri and refined by competitors like Amazon’s Alexa. But Cortana, like the Charms bar, never really took off, and Microsoft switched the voice assistant off in 2023 after a few years of steadily deprioritizing it in Windows 10 (and mostly hiding it in Windows 11).

Most older versions of Windows didn’t do anything with the Win+C, but if you go all the way back to the Windows 95 era, users of Microsoft Natural Keyboards who installed Microsoft’s IntelliType software could use Win+C to open the Control Panel. This shortcut apparently never made it into Windows itself, even as the Windows key became standard equipment on PCs in the late ’90s and early 2000s.

So pour one out for Win+C, the keyboard shortcut that is always trying to do something new and not quite catching on. We can’t wait to see what it does next.

Win+C, Windows’ most cursed keyboard shortcut, is getting retired again Read More »

microsoft-delays-recall-again,-won’t-debut-it-with-new-copilot+-pcs-after-all

Microsoft delays Recall again, won’t debut it with new Copilot+ PCs after all

AI, copilot, copilot+ PC, microsoft, microsoft recall, recall, Tech, Windows 11, windows 11 24h2, windows recall / /

another setback —

Recall will go through Windows Insider pipeline like any other Windows feature.

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Recall is part of Microsoft's Copilot+ PC program.

Enlarge / Recall is part of Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC program.

Microsoft

Microsoft will be delaying its controversial Recall feature again, according to an updated blog post by Windows and Devices VP Pavan Davuluri. And when the feature does return “in the coming weeks,” Davuluri writes, it will be as a preview available to PCs in the Windows Insider Program, the same public testing and validation pipeline that all other Windows features usually go through before being released to the general populace.

Recall is a new Windows 11 AI feature that will be available on PCs that meet the company’s requirements for its “Copilot+ PC” program. Copilot+ PCs need at least 16GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and a neural processing unit (NPU) capable of at least 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS). The first (and for a few months, only) PCs that will meet this requirement are all using Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Plus and X Elite Arm chips, with compatible Intel and AMD processors following later this year. Copilot+ PCs ship with other generative AI features, too, but Recall’s widely publicized security problems have sucked most of the oxygen out of the room so far.

The Windows Insider preview of Recall will still require a PC that meets the Copilot+ requirements, though third-party scripts may be able to turn on Recall for PCs without the necessary hardware. We’ll know more when Recall makes its reappearance.

Why Recall was recalled

Recall works by periodically capturing screenshots of your PC and saving them to disk, and scanning those screenshots with OCR to make a big searchable text database that can help you find anything you had previously viewed on your PC.

The main problem, as we confirmed with our own testing, was that all of this was saved to disk with no additional encryption or other protection and was easily viewable and copyable by pretty much any user (or attacker) with access to the PC. Recall was also going to be enabled by default on Copilot+ PCs despite being a “preview,” meaning that users who didn’t touch the default settings were going to have all of this data recorded by default.

This was the version of Recall that was initially meant to ship out to reviewers this week on the first wave of Copilot+ PCs from Microsoft and other PC companies. After security researcher Kevin Beaumont publicized these security holes in that version of Recall, the company promised to add additional encryption and authentication protections and to disable Recall by default. These tweaks would have gone out as an update to the first shipments of Copilot+ PCs on June 18 (reviewers also wouldn’t get systems before June 18, a sign of how much Microsoft was rushing behind the scenes to implement these changes). Now Recall is being pushed back again.

A report from Windows Central claims that Recall was developed “in secret” and that it wasn’t even distributed widely within Microsoft before it was announced, which could explain why these security issues weren’t flagged and fixed before the feature showed up in a publicly available version of Windows.

Microsoft’s Recall delay follows Microsoft President Brad Smith’s testimony to Congress during a House Committee on Homeland Security hearing about the company’s “cascade of security failures” in recent months. Among other things, Smith said that Microsoft would commit to prioritizing security issues over new AI-powered features as part of the company’s recently announced Secure Future Initiative (SFI). Microsoft has also hired additional security personnel and tied executive pay to meeting security goals.

“If you’re faced with the tradeoff between security and another priority, your answer is clear: Do security,” wrote Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an internal memo about the SFI announcement. “In some cases, this will mean prioritizing security above other things we do, such as releasing new features or providing ongoing support for legacy systems.”

Recall has managed to tie together all the big Windows and Microsoft stories from the last year or two: the company’s all-consuming push to quickly release generative AI features, its security failures and subsequent promises to do better, and the general degradation of the Windows 11 user interface with unwanted apps, ads, reminders, account sign-in requirements, and other cruft.

Microsoft delays Recall again, won’t debut it with new Copilot+ PCs after all Read More »

windows-recall-demands-an-extraordinary-level-of-trust-that-microsoft-hasn’t-earned

Windows Recall demands an extraordinary level of trust that Microsoft hasn’t earned

AI, copilot, copilot+ PC, Features, microsoft, NPU, Tech, Windows, Windows 11, windows 11 24h2 / /
The Recall feature as it currently exists in Windows 11 24H2 preview builds.

Enlarge / The Recall feature as it currently exists in Windows 11 24H2 preview builds.

Andrew Cunningham

Microsoft’s Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs come with quite a few new AI and machine learning-driven features, but the tentpole is Recall. Described by Microsoft as a comprehensive record of everything you do on your PC, the feature is pitched as a way to help users remember where they’ve been and to provide Windows extra contextual information that can help it better understand requests from and meet the needs of individual users.

This, as many users in infosec communities on social media immediately pointed out, sounds like a potential security nightmare. That’s doubly true because Microsoft says that by default, Recall’s screenshots take no pains to redact sensitive information, from usernames and passwords to health care information to NSFW site visits. By default, on a PC with 256GB of storage, Recall can store a couple dozen gigabytes of data across three months of PC usage, a huge amount of personal data.

The line between “potential security nightmare” and “actual security nightmare” is at least partly about the implementation, and Microsoft has been saying things that are at least superficially reassuring. Copilot+ PCs are required to have a fast neural processing unit (NPU) so that processing can be performed locally rather than sending data to the cloud; local snapshots are protected at rest by Windows’ disk encryption technologies, which are generally on by default if you’ve signed into a Microsoft account; neither Microsoft nor other users on the PC are supposed to be able to access any particular user’s Recall snapshots; and users can choose to exclude apps or (in most browsers) individual websites to exclude from Recall’s snapshots.

This all sounds good in theory, but some users are beginning to use Recall now that the Windows 11 24H2 update is available in preview form, and the actual implementation has serious problems.

“Fundamentally breaks the promise of security in Windows”

This is Recall, as seen on a PC running a preview build of Windows 11 24H2. It takes and saves periodic screenshots, which can then be searched for and viewed in various ways.

Enlarge / This is Recall, as seen on a PC running a preview build of Windows 11 24H2. It takes and saves periodic screenshots, which can then be searched for and viewed in various ways.

Andrew Cunningham

Security researcher Kevin Beaumont, first in a thread on Mastodon and later in a more detailed blog post, has written about some of the potential implementation issues after enabling Recall on an unsupported system (which is currently the only way to try Recall since Copilot+ PCs that officially support the feature won’t ship until later this month). We’ve also given this early version of Recall a try on a Windows Dev Kit 2023, which we’ve used for all our recent Windows-on-Arm testing, and we’ve independently verified Beaumont’s claims about how easy it is to find and view raw Recall data once you have access to a user’s PC.

To test Recall yourself, developer and Windows enthusiast Albacore has published a tool called AmperageKit that will enable it on Arm-based Windows PCs running Windows 11 24H2 build 26100.712 (the build currently available in the Windows Insider Release Preview channel). Other Windows 11 24H2 versions are missing the underlying code necessary to enable Recall.

  • Windows uses OCR on all the text in all the screenshots it takes. That text is also saved to an SQLite database to facilitate faster searches.

    Andrew Cunningham

  • Searching for “iCloud,” for example, brings up every single screenshot with the word “iCloud” in it, including the app itself and its entry in the Microsoft Store. If I had visited websites that mentioned it, they would show up here, too.

    Andrew Cunningham

The short version is this: In its current form, Recall takes screenshots and uses OCR to grab the information on your screen; it then writes the contents of windows plus records of different user interactions in a locally stored SQLite database to track your activity. Data is stored on a per-app basis, presumably to make it easier for Microsoft’s app-exclusion feature to work. Beaumont says “several days” of data amounted to a database around 90KB in size. In our usage, screenshots taken by Recall on a PC with a 2560×1440 screen come in at 500KB or 600KB apiece (Recall saves screenshots at your PC’s native resolution, minus the taskbar area).

Recall works locally thanks to Azure AI code that runs on your device, and it works without Internet connectivity and without a Microsoft account. Data is encrypted at rest, sort of, at least insofar as your entire drive is generally encrypted when your PC is either signed into a Microsoft account or has Bitlocker turned on. But in its current form, Beaumont says Recall has “gaps you can drive a plane through” that make it trivially easy to grab and scan through a user’s Recall database if you either (1) have local access to the machine and can log into any account (not just the account of the user whose database you’re trying to see), or (2) are using a PC infected with some kind of info-stealer virus that can quickly transfer the SQLite database to another system.

Windows Recall demands an extraordinary level of trust that Microsoft hasn’t earned Read More »

llms-keep-leaping-with-llama-3,-meta’s-newest-open-weights-ai-model

LLMs keep leaping with Llama 3, Meta’s newest open-weights AI model

AI, AI assistants, Biz & IT, chatgpt, chatgtp, copilot, Google Gemini, LLaMA, Llama 2, Llama 3, machine learning, Meta, Meta AI Assistant, microsoft, Microsoft Copilot, Open Source, open weights, openai / /

computer-powered word generator —

Zuckerberg says new AI model “was still learning” when Meta stopped training.

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A group of pink llamas on a pixelated background.

On Thursday, Meta unveiled early versions of its Llama 3 open-weights AI model that can be used to power text composition, code generation, or chatbots. It also announced that its Meta AI Assistant is now available on a website and is going to be integrated into its major social media apps, intensifying the company’s efforts to position its products against other AI assistants like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, and Google’s Gemini.

Like its predecessor, Llama 2, Llama 3 is notable for being a freely available, open-weights large language model (LLM) provided by a major AI company. Llama 3 technically does not quality as “open source” because that term has a specific meaning in software (as we have mentioned in other coverage), and the industry has not yet settled on terminology for AI model releases that ship either code or weights with restrictions (you can read Llama 3’s license here) or that ship without providing training data. We typically call these releases “open weights” instead.

At the moment, Llama 3 is available in two parameter sizes: 8 billion (8B) and 70 billion (70B), both of which are available as free downloads through Meta’s website with a sign-up. Llama 3 comes in two versions: pre-trained (basically the raw, next-token-prediction model) and instruction-tuned (fine-tuned to follow user instructions). Each has a 8,192 token context limit.

A screenshot of the Meta AI Assistant website on April 18, 2024.

Enlarge / A screenshot of the Meta AI Assistant website on April 18, 2024.

Benj Edwards

Meta trained both models on two custom-built, 24,000-GPU clusters. In a podcast interview with Dwarkesh Patel, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company trained the 70B model with around 15 trillion tokens of data. Throughout the process, the model never reached “saturation” (that is, it never hit a wall in terms of capability increases). Eventually, Meta pulled the plug and moved on to training other models.

“I guess our prediction going in was that it was going to asymptote more, but even by the end it was still leaning. We probably could have fed it more tokens, and it would have gotten somewhat better,” Zuckerberg said on the podcast.

Meta also announced that it is currently training a 400B parameter version of Llama 3, which some experts like Nvidia’s Jim Fan think may perform in the same league as GPT-4 Turbo, Claude 3 Opus, and Gemini Ultra on benchmarks like MMLU, GPQA, HumanEval, and MATH.

Speaking of benchmarks, we have devoted many words in the past to explaining how frustratingly imprecise benchmarks can be when applied to large language models due to issues like training contamination (that is, including benchmark test questions in the training dataset), cherry-picking on the part of vendors, and an inability to capture AI’s general usefulness in an interactive session with chat-tuned models.

But, as expected, Meta provided some benchmarks for Llama 3 that list results from MMLU (undergraduate level knowledge), GSM-8K (grade-school math), HumanEval (coding), GPQA (graduate-level questions), and MATH (math word problems). These show the 8B model performing well compared to open-weights models like Google’s Gemma 7B and Mistral 7B Instruct, and the 70B model also held its own against Gemini Pro 1.5 and Claude 3 Sonnet.

A chart of instruction-tuned Llama 3 8B and 70B benchmarks provided by Meta.

Enlarge / A chart of instruction-tuned Llama 3 8B and 70B benchmarks provided by Meta.

Meta says that the Llama 3 model has been enhanced with capabilities to understand coding (like Llama 2) and, for the first time, has been trained with both images and text—though it currently outputs only text. According to Reuters, Meta Chief Product Officer Chris Cox noted in an interview that more complex processing abilities (like executing multi-step plans) are expected in future updates to Llama 3, which will also support multimodal outputs—that is, both text and images.

Meta plans to host the Llama 3 models on a range of cloud platforms, making them accessible through AWS, Databricks, Google Cloud, and other major providers.

Also on Thursday, Meta announced that Llama 3 will become the new basis of the Meta AI virtual assistant, which the company first announced in September. The assistant will appear prominently in search features for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and the aforementioned dedicated website that features a design similar to ChatGPT, including the ability to generate images in the same interface. The company also announced a partnership with Google to integrate real-time search results into the Meta AI assistant, adding to an existing partnership with Microsoft’s Bing.

LLMs keep leaping with Llama 3, Meta’s newest open-weights AI model Read More »

copilot-key-is-based-on-a-button-you-probably-haven’t-seen-since-ibm’s-model-m

Copilot key is based on a button you probably haven’t seen since IBM’s Model M

AI, copilot, generative ai, Keyboards, laptops, microsoft, Tech, Windows, Windows 11 / /

Microsoft chatbot button —

Left-Shift + Windows key + F23

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A Dell XPS 14 laptop with a Copilot key.

Enlarge / A Dell XPS 14 laptop. The Copilot key is to the right of the right-Alt button.

In January, Microsoft introduced a new key to Windows PC keyboards for the first time in 30 years. The Copilot key, dedicated to launching Microsoft’s eponymous generative AI assistant, is already on some Windows laptops released this year. On Monday, Tom’s Hardware dug into the new addition and determined exactly what pressing the button does, which is actually pretty simple. Pushing a computer’s integrated Copilot button is like pressing left-Shift + Windows key + F23 simultaneously.

Tom’s Hardware confirmed this after wondering if the Copilot key introduced a new scan code to Windows or if it worked differently. Using the scripting program AuthoHotkey with a new laptop with a Copilot button, Tom’s Hardware discovered the keystrokes registered when a user presses the Copilot key. The publication confirmed with Dell that “this key assignment is standard for the Copilot key and done at Microsoft’s direction.”

F23

Surprising to see in that string of keys is F23. Having a computer keyboard with a function row or rows that take you from F1 all the way to F23 is quite rare today. When I try to imagine a keyboard that comes with an F23 button, vintage keyboards come to mind, more specifically buckling spring keyboards from IBM.

IBM’s Model F, which debuted in 1981 and used buckling spring switches over a capacitive PCB, and the Model M, which launched in 1985 and used buckling spring switches over a membrane sheet, both offered layouts with 122 keys. These layouts included not one, but two rows of function keys that would leave today’s 60 percent keyboard fans sweating over the wasted space.

But having 122 keys was helpful for keyboards tied to IBM business terminals. The keyboard layout even included a bank of keys to the left of the primary alpha block of keys for even more forms of input.

An IBM Model M keyboard with an F23 key.

Enlarge / An IBM Model M keyboard with an F23 key.

The 122-key keyboard layout with F23 lives on. Beyond people who still swear by old Model F and M keyboards, Model F Labs and Unicomp both currently sell modern buckling spring keyboards with built-in F23 buttons. Another reason a modern Windows PC user might have access to an F23 key is if they use a macro pad.

But even with those uses in mind, the F23 key remains rare. That helps explain why Microsoft would use the key for launching Copilot; users are unlikely to have F23 programmed for other functions. This was also likely less work than making a key with an entirely new scan code.

The Copilot button is reprogrammable

When I previewed Dell’s 2024 XPS laptops, a Dell representative told me that the integrated Copilot key wasn’t reprogrammable. However, in addition to providing some interesting information about the newest PC key since the Windows button, Tom’s Hardware’s revelation shows why the Copilot key is actually reprogrammable, even if OEMs don’t give users a way to do so out of the box. (If you need help, check out the website’s tutorial for reprogramming the Windows Copilot key.)

I suspect there’s a strong interest in reprogramming that button. For one, generative AI, despite all its hype and potential, is still an emerging technology. Many don’t need or want access to any chatbot—let alone Microsoft’s—instantly or even at all. Those who don’t use their system with a Microsoft account have no use for the button, since being logged in to a Microsoft account is required for the button to launch Copilot.

A rendering of the Copilot button.

Enlarge / A rendering of the Copilot button.

Microsoft

Additionally, there are other easy ways to launch Copilot on a computer that has the program downloaded, like double-clicking an icon or pressing Windows + C, that make a dedicated button unnecessary. (Ars Technica asked Microsoft why the Copilot key doesn’t just register Windows + C, but the company declined to comment. Windows + C has launched other apps in the past, including Cortana, so it’s possible that Microsoft wanted to avoid the Copilot key performing a different function when pressed on computers that use Windows images without Copilot.)

In general, shoehorning the Copilot key into Windows laptops seems premature. Copilot is young and still a preview; just a few months ago, it was called Bing Chat. Further, the future of generative AI, including its popularity and top uses, is still forming and could evolve substantially during the lifetime of a Windows laptop. Microsoft’s generative AI efforts could also flounder over the years. Imagine if Microsoft went all-in on Bing back in the day and made all Windows keyboards have a Bing button, for example. Just because Microsoft wants something to become mainstream doesn’t mean that it will.

This all has made the Copilot button seem more like a way to force the adoption of Microsoft’s chatbot than a way to improve Windows keyboards. Microsoft has also made the Copilot button a requirement for its AI PC certification (which also requires an integrated neural processing unit and having Copilot pre-installed). Microsoft plans to make Copilot keys a requirement for Windows 11 OEM PCs eventually, it told Ars Technica in January.

At least for now, the basic way that the Copilot button works means you can turn the key into something more useful. Now, the tricky part would be finding a replacement keycap to eradicate Copilot’s influence from your keyboard.

Listing image by Microsoft

Copilot key is based on a button you probably haven’t seen since IBM’s Model M Read More »

intel,-microsoft-discuss-plans-to-run-copilot-locally-on-pcs-instead-of-in-the-cloud

Intel, Microsoft discuss plans to run Copilot locally on PCs instead of in the cloud

AI, chatgpt, copilot, intel, microsoft, Tech / /

the ai pc —

Companies are trying to make the “AI PC” happen with new silicon and software.

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The basic requirements for an AI PC, at least when it's running Windows.

Enlarge / The basic requirements for an AI PC, at least when it’s running Windows.

Intel

Microsoft said in January that 2024 would be the year of the “AI PC,” and we know that AI PCs will include a few hardware components that most Windows systems currently do not include—namely, a built-in neural processing unit (NPU) and Microsoft’s new Copilot key for keyboards. But so far we haven’t heard a whole lot about what a so-called AI PC will actually do for users.

Microsoft and Intel are starting to talk about a few details as part of an announcement from Intel about a new AI PC developer program that will encourage software developers to leverage local hardware to build AI features into their apps.

The main news comes from Tom’s Hardware, confirming that AI PCs would be able to run “more elements of Copilot,” Microsoft’s AI chatbot assistant, “locally on the client.” Currently, Copilot relies on server-side processing even for small requests, introducing lag that is tolerable if you’re making a broad request for information but less so if all you want to do is change a setting or get basic answers. Running generative AI models locally could also improve user privacy, making it possible to take advantage of AI-infused software without automatically sending information to a company that will use it for further model training.

Right now, Windows doesn’t use local NPUs for much, since most current PCs don’t have them. The Surface Studio webcam features can use NPUs for power-efficient video effects and background replacement, but as of this writing that’s pretty much it. Apple’s and Google’s operating systems both use NPUs for a wider swatch of image and audio processing features, including facial recognition and object recognition, OCR, live transcription and translation, and more.

Intel also said that Microsoft would require NPUs in “next-gen AI PCs” to hit speeds of 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS) to meet its requirements. Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, and others sometimes use TOPS as a high-level performance metric when comparing their NPUs; Intel’s Meteor Lake laptop chips can run 10 TOPS, while AMD’s Ryzen 7040 and 8040 laptop chips hit 10 TOPS and 16 TOPS, respectively.

Unfortunately for Intel, the first company to put out an NPU suitable for powering Copilot locally may come from Qualcomm. The company’s upcoming Snapdragon X processors, long seen as the Windows ecosystem’s answer to Apple’s M-series Mac chips, promise up to 45 TOPS. Rumors suggest that Microsoft will shift the consumer version of its Surface tablet to Qualcomm’s chips after a few years of offering both Intel and Qualcomm options; Microsoft announced a Surface Pro update with Intel’s Meteor Lake chips last week but is only selling it to businesses.

Asus and Intel are offering a NUC with a Meteor Lake CPU and its built-in NPU as an AI development platform.

Enlarge / Asus and Intel are offering a NUC with a Meteor Lake CPU and its built-in NPU as an AI development platform.

Intel

All of that said, TOPS are just one simplified performance metric. As when using FLOPS to compare graphics performance, it’s imprecise and won’t capture variations in how each NPU handles different tasks. And the Arm version of Windows still has software and hardware compatibility issues that could continue to hold it back.

As part of its developer program, Intel is also offering an “AI PC development kit” centered on an Asus NUC Pro 14, a mini PC built around Intel’s Meteor Lake silicon. Intel formally stopped making its NUC mini PCs last year, passing the brand and all of its designs off to Asus. Asus is also handling all remaining warranty service and software support for older NUCs designed and sold by Intel. The NUC Pro 14 is one of the first new NUCs announced since the transition, along with the ROG NUC mini gaming PC.

Intel, Microsoft discuss plans to run Copilot locally on PCs instead of in the cloud Read More »

microsoft-debuts-major-surface-overhauls-that-regular-people-can’t-buy

Microsoft debuts major Surface overhauls that regular people can’t buy

copilot, microsoft, Microsoft Surface, Surface, surface laptop, surface pro, Tech, Windows 11 / /

business time —

Not the first business-exclusive Surfaces, but they’re the most significant.

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  • Microsoft

  • Yes, both devices launch with Microsoft’s new Copilot key.

    Microsoft

  • The Surface Pro 10. Looks familiar.

    Microsoft

  • An NFC reader supports physical security keys.

    Microsoft

  • The 13.5- and 15-inch Surface Laptop 6.

    Microsoft

  • The 15-inch Laptop 6 can be configured with a security card reader, another business thing.

    Microsoft

Microsoft is debuting major updates to two of its Surface PCs today: both the Surface Pro 10 and the 13.5- and 15-inch Surface Laptop 6 are major internal upgrades to Microsoft’s mainstream Surface devices. Both were last updated nearly a year and a half ago, and they’re both getting new Intel chips with significantly faster integrated GPUs, upgraded webcams, the Copilot key, and better battery life (according to Microsoft’s spec sheets).

The catch is that both of these Surfaces are being sold exclusively to businesses and commercial customers; as of this writing, regular people will not be able to buy one directly from Microsoft, and they won’t show up in most retail stores.

These aren’t the first Surface products released exclusively for businesses. Microsoft introduced a new business-exclusive Surface Go 3 tablet last fall, and a Surface Pro 7+ variant for businesses in early 2021. It is, however, the first time Microsoft has introduced new versions of its flagship tablet and laptop without also making them available to consumers. You can find some of these business-only PCs for sale at some third-party retailers, but usually with extended shipping times and higher prices than consumer systems.

Though this seems like a step back from the consumer PC market, Microsoft is still reportedly planning new consumer Surfaces. The Verge reports that Microsoft is planning a new Surface with Qualcomm’s upcoming Snapdragon X chip, to debut in May. It’s that device, rather than today’s traditional Intel-based Surface Pro 10, that will apparently take over as the flagship consumer Surface PC.

“We absolutely remain committed to consumer devices,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars. “Building great devices that people love to use aligns closely with our company mission to empower individuals as well as organizations. We are excited to be bringing devices to market that deliver great AI experiences to our customers. This commercial announcement is only the first part of this effort.”

This would be a big departure for Microsoft, which for a few years now has offered the Intel-based Surface tablets as its primary convertible tablets and the Arm-based Surface Pro X and Surface Pro 9 with 5G as separate niche variants. Older Qualcomm chips’ mediocre performance and lingering software and hardware compatibility issues with the Arm version of Windows have held those devices back, though Snapdragon X at least promises to solve the performance issues. If Microsoft plans to go all-in on Arm for its flagship consumer Surface device, it at least makes a little sense to retain the Intel-based Surface for businesses that will be more sensitive to those performance and compatibility problems.

What’s new in the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6?

As for the hardware itself, for people who might be getting them at work or people who go out of their way to find one: The biggest upgrade is that both Surface devices have been updated with Intel Core Ultra CPUs based on the Meteor Lake architecture. While the processor performance improvements in these chips are a bit underwhelming, their Arc-integrated GPUs are significantly faster than the old Iris Xe GPUs. And the chips also include a neural processing unit (NPU) that can accelerate some AI and machine-learning workloads; Microsoft currently uses them mostly for fancy webcam effects, but more software will likely take advantage of them as they become more widely available.

Those new chips (and small battery capacity increases) have also bumped all of Microsoft’s battery life estimates up a bit. The Surface Pro 10 is said to be good for 19 hours of “typical device usage,” up from 15.5 hours from the Intel version of the Surface Pro 9. The 13.5 and 15-inch Surface Laptop 6 gets 18.5 and 19 hours of battery life, respectively, up from 18 and 17 hours for the Surface Laptop 5.

The downside is that the Surface Laptops are a bit heavier than the Laptop 5: 3.06 pounds and 3.7 pounds, compared to 2.86 and 3.44 pounds for the 13.5- and 15-inch models.

Both models also get new webcam hardware to go with those NPU-accelerated video effects. The Surface Pro goes from a 1080p webcam to a 1440p webcam, and the Surface Laptop goes from 720p to 1080p. The Surface Pro 10’s camera also features an “ultrawide field of view.” Both cameras support Windows Hello biometric logins using a scan of your face, and the Surface Pro 10 also has an NFC reader for use with hardware security keys. As business machines, both devices also have dedicated hardware TPM modules to support drive encryption and other features, instead of the firmware TPMs that the Surface Pro 9 and Surface Laptop 5 used. Neither supports Microsoft’s Pluton technology.

A new Type Cover with a brighter backlight and bolder legends was made for users with low vision or those who want to reduce eyestrain.

Enlarge / A new Type Cover with a brighter backlight and bolder legends was made for users with low vision or those who want to reduce eyestrain.

Microsoft

Neither device gets a big screen update, though there are small improvements. Microsoft says the Surface Pro 10’s 13-inch, 2880×1920 touchscreen is 33 percent brighter than before, with a maximum brightness of 600 nits. The screen has a slightly better contrast ratio than before and an anti-reflective coating; it also still supports a 120 Hz refresh rate. The Surface Laptop 6 doesn’t get a brightness bump but does have better contrast and an anti-reflective coating. Both devices are still using regular IPS LCD panels rather than OLED or something fancier.

And finally, some odds and ends. The 15-inch Surface Laptop 6 picks up a second Thunderbolt port and optional support for a smart card reader. The Surface Pro now has a “bold keyset” keyboard option, with an easier-to-read font and brighter backlight for users with low vision. These keyboards should also work with some older Surface devices, if you can find them.

The systems will be available to pre-order “in select markets” on March 21, and they’ll begin shipping on April 9. Microsoft didn’t share any specifics about pricing, though as business machines, we’d generally expect them to cost a little more than equivalent consumer PCs.

Listing image by Microsoft

Microsoft debuts major Surface overhauls that regular people can’t buy Read More »

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DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman will run Microsoft’s new consumer AI unit

AI, copilot, deepmind, microsoft, syndication / /

Minding deeply —

Most staffers from Suleyman’s startup, Inflection, will join Microsoft as well.

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Mustafa Suleyman, talks on Day 1 of the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park at Bletchley Park on November 1, 2023 in Bletchley, England.

Enlarge / Mustafa Suleyman, talks on Day 1 of the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park at Bletchley Park on November 1, 2023 in Bletchley, England.

Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder of Google’s DeepMind and chief executive of artificial intelligence start-up Inflection, to run a new consumer AI unit.

Suleyman, a British entrepreneur who co-founded DeepMind in London in 2010, will report to Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella, the company announced on Tuesday. He will launch a division of Microsoft that brings consumer-facing products including Microsoft’s Copilot, Bing, Edge, and GenAI under one team called Microsoft AI.

It is the latest move by Microsoft to capitalize on the boom in generative AI. It has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and rapidly integrated its technology into Microsoft products.

Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI has given it an early lead in Silicon Valley’s race to deploy AI, leaving its biggest rival, Google, struggling to catch up. It also has invested in other AI startups, including French developer Mistral.

It has been rolling out an AI assistant in its products such as Windows, Office software, and cyber security tools. Suleyman’s unit will work on projects including integrating an AI version of Copilot into its Windows operating system and enhancing the use of generative AI in its Bing search engine.

Nadella said in a statement on Tuesday: “I’ve known Mustafa for several years and have greatly admired him as a founder of both DeepMind and Inflection, and as a visionary, product maker and builder of pioneering teams that go after bold missions.”

DeepMind was acquired by Google in 2014 for $500 million, one of the first large bets by a big tech company on a startup AI lab. The company faced controversy a few years later over some of its projects, including its work for the UK healthcare sector, which was found by a government watchdog to have been granted inappropriate access to patient records.

Suleyman, who was the main public face for the company, was placed on leave in 2019. DeepMind workers had complained that he had an overly aggressive management style. Addressing staff complaints at the time, Suleyman said: “I really screwed up. I was very demanding and pretty relentless.”

He moved to Google months later, where he led AI product management. In 2022, he joined Silicon Valley venture capital firm Greylock and launched Inflection later that year.

Microsoft will also hire most of Inflection’s staff, including Karén Simonyan, cofounder and chief scientist of Inflection, who will be chief scientist of the AI group. Microsoft did not clarify the number of employees moving over but said it included AI engineers, researchers, and large language model builders who have designed and co-authored “many of the most important contributions in advancing AI over the last five years.”

Inflection, a rival to OpenAI, will switch its focus from its consumer chatbot, Pi, and instead move to sell enterprise AI software to businesses, according to a statement on its website. Sean White, who has held various technology roles, has joined as its new chief executive.

Inflection’s third cofounder, Reid Hoffman, the founder and executive chair of LinkedIn, will remain on Inflection’s board. Inflection had raised $1.3 billion in June, valuing the group at about $4 billion, in one of the largest fundraisings by an AI start-up amid an explosion of interest in the sector.

The new unit marks a big organizational shift at Microsoft. Mikhail Parakhin, its president of web services, will move along with his entire team to report to Suleyman.

“We have a real shot to build technology that was once thought impossible and that lives up to our mission to ensure the benefits of AI reach every person and organization on the planet, safely and responsibly,” Nadella said.

Competition regulators in the US and Europe have been scrutinising the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI amid a broader inquiry into AI investments.

© 2024 The Financial Times Ltd. All rights reserved. Not to be redistributed, copied, or modified in any way.

DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman will run Microsoft’s new consumer AI unit Read More »

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WordPad out; 80Gbps USB support and other Win 11 features in testing this month

AI, chatgpt, copilot, microsoft, Tech, Windows, Windows 11 / /

Can’t stop won’t stop —

Microsoft’s next batch of Windows 11 feature updates is taking shape.

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Green USB-C cable

Windows 11’s big feature update in September included a long list of minor changes, plus the Copilot AI assistant; that update was followed by Windows 11 23H2 in late October, which reset the operating system’s timeline for technical support and security updates but didn’t add much else in and of itself. But Windows development never stops these days, and this month’s Insider Preview builds have already shown us a few things that could end up in the stable version of the operating system in the next couple of months.

One major addition, which rolled out to Dev Channel builds on January 11 and Beta Channel builds today, is support for 80Gbps USB 4 ports. These speeds are part of the USB4 Version 2.0 spec—named with the USB-IF’s typical flair for clarity and consistency—that was published in 2022. Full 80Gbps speeds are still rare and will be for the foreseeable future, but Microsoft says that they’ll be included the Razer Blade 18 and a handful of other PCs with Intel’s 14th-generation HX-series laptop processors. We’d expect the new speeds to proliferate slowly and mostly in high-end systems over the next few months and years.

Another addition to that January 11 Dev Channel build is a change in how the Copilot generative AI assistant works. Normally, Copilot is launched by the user manually, either by clicking the icon on the taskbar, hitting the Win+C key combo, or (in some new PCs) by using the dedicated Copilot button on the keyboard. In recent Dev Channel builds, the Copilot window will open automatically on certain PCs as soon as you log into Windows, becoming part of your default desktop unless you turn it off in Settings.

The Copilot panel will only open by default on screens that meet minimum size and resolution requirements, things that Windows already detects and takes into account when setting your PC’s default zoom and showing available Snap Layouts, among other things. Microsoft says it’s testing the feature on screens that are 27 inches or larger with 1,920 or more horizontal pixels (for most screens, this means a minimum resolution of 1080p). For PCs without Copilot, including those that haven’t been signed into a Microsoft account, the feature will continue to be absent.

The

Enlarge / The “richer weather experience on the Lock screen,” seen in the bottom-center of this screenshot.

Microsoft

Other additions to the Dev Channel builds this month include easy Snipping Tool editing for Android screenshots from phones that have been paired to your PC, custom user-created voice commands, the ability to share URLs directly to services like WhatsApp and Gmail from the Windows share window, a new Weather widget for the Windows lock screen, and app install notifications from the Microsoft store.

Microsoft hasn’t publicized any of the changes it has made to its Canary channel builds since January 4—this is typical since it changes the fastest, and the tested features are the most likely to be removed or significantly tweaked before being released to the public. Most of the significant additions from that announcement have since made it out to the other channels, but there are a couple of things worth noting. First, there’s a new Energy Saver taskbar icon for desktop PCs without batteries, making it easier to tell when the feature is on without creating confusion. And the venerable WordPad app, originally marked for deletion in September, has also been removed from these builds and can’t be reinstalled.

Microsoft doesn’t publish Windows feature updates on an exact cadence beyond its commitment to deliver one with a new version number once per year in the fall. Last year’s first major batch of Windows 11 additions rolled out at the end of February, so a late winter or early spring launch window for the next batch of features could make sense.

WordPad out; 80Gbps USB support and other Win 11 features in testing this month Read More »

bing-search-shows-few,-if-any,-signs-of-market-share-increase-from-ai-features

Bing Search shows few, if any, signs of market share increase from AI features

AI, Bing, Bing Chat, chatgpt, copilot, Google, microsoft, Windows 11, windows copilot / /

high hopes —

Bing’s US and worldwide market share is about the same as it has been for years.

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Bing Search shows few, if any, signs of market share increase from AI features

Microsoft

Not quite one year ago, Microsoft announced a “multi-year, multi-billion dollar investment” in OpenAI, a company that had made waves in 2022 with its ChatGPT chatbot and DALL-E image creator. The next month, Microsoft announced that it was integrating a generative AI chatbot into its Bing search engine and Edge browser, and similar generative AI features were announced for Windows in the apps formerly known as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Teams, and other products.

Adding AI features to Bing was meant to give it an edge over Google, and reports indicated that Google was worried enough about it to accelerate its own internal generative AI efforts. Microsoft announced in March 2023 that Bing surpassed the 100 million monthly active users mark based on interest in Bing Chat and its ilk; by Microsoft’s estimates, each percentage of Google’s search market share that Bing could siphon away was worth as much as $2 billion to Microsoft.

A year later, it looks like Microsoft’s AI efforts may have helped Bing on the margins, but they haven’t meaningfully eroded Google’s search market share, according to Bloomberg. Per Bloomberg’s analysis of data from Sensor Tower, Bing usage had been down around 33 percent year over year just before the AI-powered features were added, but those numbers had rebounded by the middle of 2023.

Microsoft hasn’t given an official update on Bing’s monthly active users in quite a while—we’ve asked the company for an update, and will share it if we get one—though Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Medhi told Bloomberg that “millions and millions of people” were still using the new AI features.

StatCounter data mostly tells a similar story. According to its data, Google’s worldwide market share is currently in the low 90s, and it has been for virtually the entire 15-year period for which StatCounter offers data. Bing’s worldwide market share number over the same period has been remarkably stable; it was about 3.5 percent in the summer of 2009, when what had been known as Live Search was renamed Bing in the first place, and as of December 2023, it was still stuck at around 3.4 percent.

Recent US data is slightly more flattering for Microsoft, where Bing’s usage rose from 6.7 percent in December 2022 to 7.7 percent in December 2023. But that doesn’t necessarily suggest any kind of AI-fueled influx in new Bing search users—usage remained in the mid-to-high 6 percent range through most of 2023 before ticking up right at the end of the year—and Bing’s US usage has floated in that same 6–7 percent zone for most of the last decade.

It even seems like Microsoft is making moves to distance its AI efforts from Bing a bit. What began as “Bing Chat” or “the new Bing” is now known as Windows Copilot—both inside Windows 11 and elsewhere. Earlier this week, the Bing Image Creator became “Image Creator from Designer.” Both products still feature Bing branding prominently—the Copilot screen in Windows 11 still says “with Bing” at the top of it, and the Image Creator tool is still hosted on the Bing.com domain. But if these new AI features aren’t driving Bing’s market share up, then it makes sense for Microsoft to create room for them to stand on their own.

That’s not to say Google’s search dominance is assured. Leipzig University researchers published a study earlier this week (PDF) suggesting Google, Bing, and the Bing-powered DuckDuckGo had seen “an overall downward trend in text quality,” especially for heavily SEO-optimized categories like purchase recommendations and product reviews.

Bing Search shows few, if any, signs of market share increase from AI features Read More »

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Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994

copilot, microsoft, openai, Tech, Windows 10, Windows 11 / /

key change —

Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards, though not yet.

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A rendering of Microsoft's Copilot key, as seen on a Surface-esque laptop keyboard.

Enlarge / A rendering of Microsoft’s Copilot key, as seen on a Surface-esque laptop keyboard.

Microsoft

Microsoft pushed throughout 2023 to add generative AI capabilities to its software, even extending its new Copilot AI assistant to Windows 10 late last year. Now, those efforts to transform PCs at a software level is extending to the hardware: Microsoft is adding a dedicated Copilot key to PC keyboards, adjusting the standard Windows keyboard layout for the first time since the Windows key first appeared on its Natural Keyboard in 1994.

The Copilot key will, predictably, open up the Copilot generative AI assistant within Windows 10 and Windows 11. On an up-to-date Windows PC with Copilot enabled, you can currently do the same thing by pressing Windows + C. For PCs without Copilot enabled, including those that aren’t signed into Microsoft accounts, the Copilot key will open Windows Search instead (though this is sort of redundant, since pressing the Windows key and then typing directly into the Start menu also activates the Search function).

A quick Microsoft demo video shows the Copilot key in between the cluster of arrow keys and the right Alt button, a place where many keyboards usually put a menu button, a right Ctrl key, another Windows key, or something similar. The exact positioning, and the key being replaced, may vary depending on the size and layout of the keyboard.

We asked Microsoft if a Copilot key would be required on OEM PCs going forward; the company told us that the key isn’t mandatory now, but that it expects Copilot keys to be required on Windows 11 keyboards “over time.” Microsoft often imposes some additional hardware requirements on major PC makers that sell Windows on their devices, beyond what is strictly necessary to run Windows itself.

If nothing else, this new key is a sign of how much Microsoft wants people to use Copilot and its other generative AI products. Plenty of past company initiatives—Bing, Edge, Cortana, and the Microsoft Store, to name a few—never managed to become baked into the hardware like this. In the Windows 8 epoch, Microsoft required OEMs to build a Windows button into the display bezel of devices with touchscreens, but that requirement eventually disappeared. If Copilot fizzles or is deemphasized the way Cortana was, the Copilot key could become a way to quickly date a Windows PC from the mid-2020s, the way that changes to the Windows logo date keyboards from earlier eras.

We’ll definitely see more AI features from Microsoft this year, too—Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Medhi called 2024 “the year of the AI PC” in today’s announcement.

Chipmakers like Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm are all building neural processing units (NPUs) into their latest silicon, and we’ll likely see more updates for Windows apps and features that can take advantage of this new on-device processing capability. Rumors also indicate that we could see a “Windows 12” release as soon as this year; while Windows 11 has mostly had AI features stacked on top of it, a new OS could launch with AI features more deeply integrated into the UI and apps, as well as additional hardware requirements for some features.

Microsoft says the Copilot key will debut in some PCs that will be announced at the Consumer Electronics Show this month. Surface devices with the revised keyboard layout are “upcoming.”

Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994 Read More »