I got to play with Microsoft Copilot+, and this could change how you use your computer

The era of AI PCs is officially here, which is contrary to the tail end of 2023 when AI PCs were officially here. Unlike the ones we saw then, these new ones have NPUs that will get you 45 trillion operations per second (TOPS), and Microsoft is branding them as Copilot+.

Copilot+ is all about bringing AI from the cloud to your device, and I already know what you're thinking. "Why should I care about this?" I've talked to numerous companies about this, because it's fine that you don't care. Computers are a tool, and saying you should use them differently is like telling someone that there's a better way to swing a hammer.

My advice to them has been to just sell someone a great PC, and delight them with the experiences they discover. After trying Copilot+, I think that's exactly what's going to happen. This is an inflection point for PCs, and it's OK if you don't think it's for you.

Trying out Copilot+

Recall

Recall seems to be the hero feature of Copilot+, and for good reason. It gives you a timeline of everything that you've done on your PC and lets you go back to it, but if that sounds a whole lot like Windows Timeline in Windows 10, don't worry. It's so much better than that.

It not only has a timeline of things you've done, but it's totally searchable. Speaking with Microsoft Technical Fellow Stevie Bathiche, he mentioned to me that it's a little crazy that it's always been way easier to search the internet than it is to search our own PCs.

With Recall, you can use natural language to ask for something. For example, let's say you can't remember the name of someone you were speaking with on a meeting. You can ask Recall for the person wearing a red shirt on the last Teams call you were on. If you're looking for a photo, you can ask for that picture of yourself wearing a baseball cap at the Empire State Building. You get the idea. AI can get context from things you're doing, and it's searchable.

Developers don't have to do anything either, another thing that differentiates Recall from Windows Timeline. It's using AI to recognize things, so there's no API that the app needs to call.

It's really cool, and it's all running on-device. None of those snapshots of what you're doing are sent to servers anywhere. Moreover, Bathiche talked to me about how Microsoft put a lot of thought into privacy and user trust. You have pretty complete control over it.

For one thing, you can control how much data it can store, starting at 25GB, which I'm told is good for around three months. You can pause it, in case you don't want whatever you're doing to be saved to Recall, and you can choose apps to be excluded from being saved.

Windows Studio Effects

Windows Studio Effects is the original AI PC feature, debuting back in 2019 with the Surface Pro X. Over time, Microsoft added features like the ability to blur your background, gaze correction, auto reframe, and noise cancelation to the suite. My question has always been, why do I need my device to do background blur when Google Meet does it for me anyway?

It always felt like a way to say, "Hey, we have an NPU and it can do things. Here's an example." Moving forward, it was something that Qualcomm boasted because Intel couldn't do it. Some Intel PCs shipped with it and the results were awful in the products I tested. It wasn't until Intel Core Ultra shipped that Windows Studio Effects could run in full on x86 hardware.

For Copilot+, Windows Studio Effects is getting some new features. There's a new portrait light feature, which is different from background blur. There are also new animations, like illustrated, animated, and watercolor, which make you look more like a drawing.

All of these new features are exclusive to Copilot+, so you'll need a 40+ TOPS NPU to get them.

Live Captions

There isn't too much I can say on Live Captions. Basically, you can take any video or live feed and add captions to it. It can do translations too, as you can see in the photos. The person demoing the feature playfully noted that I'll have to trust him that it was translating correctly.

Cocreator

When Microsoft first announced Cocreator, it seemed like just another image generator, but the 'co' prefix really does mean something here. Living inside Paint, it's actually working with you to create images.

Combining a prompt and a drawing, it's using AI to make images based on what it thinks you want. We were creating a city, and made a prompt as such, along with a crude drawing of the outlines of some buildings. Cocreator got to work making that city.

As you add to it, Cocreator continues to work on the image that it thinks you want. We added a yellow circle for the sun and a crude drawing of the space needle. We adjusted the prompt to say we were trying to draw Seattle, and the image adjusted.

Microsoft says that this is all about giving the people the tools you need to do what you want to do. Maybe you have the creativity to draw but you don't have the talent. Corcreator can help you along the way.

Copilot+ is good for everyone

Most of what we'd seen for AI PCs so far has been about Windows Studio Effects, which weren't too exciting. Third-party developers have introduced some things, but you sort of have to already be invested in those to care.

Copilot+ is that and way more. It's a mission to make your PC smarter, so it can just do things you haven't done before, but in an intuitive way.

No one is going to force you to use your new laptop differently. But one day, you might be looking for some photo you took in some random place, and without remembering where that place was, you'll be able to describe some things you remember from the picture, and you'll be able to find it. These little things are what make computers better.