It's been a few months since Microsoft announced Copilot+, its AI PC initiative, and it's now going full steam. Qualcomm Snapdragon X series PCs have been out for over six months, and PCs with Intel Core Ultra Series 2 or AMD Ryzen AI 300 HX processors are also getting Copilot+ in the near future, with most features currently in testing with Insiders.
It's a big deal, and it changes the computing landscape. So, what does it all mean? Here's a breakdown.
Copilot, Copilot Pro, and Copilot+ — breaking down Microsoft's confusing AI products
Confused by Microsoft's Copilot products? We're here to help.
What is Copilot+, and what can I do with it?
AI PCs are here
I know what you're thinking. It's the same thing everyone thinks when there's a major change is Windows. "I'm fine with the way I use my computer. Why would I want to change that?" I know. A computer is a tool we've been using mostly the same way for decades. It's like telling someone they need to start swinging a hammer differently.
Microsoft wants your computer to be friendlier, though. It wants it to be smart enough to work with you, not just do the things you tell it to. Speaking to XDA, Microsoft technical fellow Stevie Bathiche talked about going from being explicit to being implicit. In a briefing that also included Yusuf Mehdi and Windows chief Pavan Davuluri, they even made reference to things being "fuzzy", like how if you click on something and miss the pixel, your PC should be smart enough to know to interact with that object.
To do this, the company says it reimagined how Windows works from the inside-out, and it reengineered it to be optimized for Arm processors, not that x86 is getting snubbed.
AI technology is moving fast, and while it's fun to poke fun at the blunders of LLMs, that won't be a thing forever. At the end of 2023, Intel Meteor Lake launched with NPUs less than a quarter as powerful as the ones that showed up in the Snapdragon X processors six months later, and then AMD and Intel only took a couple of months to get their own hardware out with Copilot+ support. The hardware is advancing, and the software is keeping pace. They're two components that are driving each other forward, and Microsoft wants to be there.
Copilot+ is about the whole stack, from hardware, to software, to AI capabilities, and finding new ways to leverage the increased capabilities of the NPUs to make Windows work for you. You'll see more and more of these features show up as the hardware improves.
The first wave of features (already available, except for Recall)
Recall
Remember Windows Timeline? It was a feature in Windows 10 that let you look at a timeline that allowed you to access things you were previously working on.
Recall is kind of like that, except with more natural language. You'll be able to scroll a timeline to find apps, documents, and more, but you'll be able to describe things you remember about the document to get back to it.
There's been some controversy about the feature, because Windows is taking screenshots of everything that you do, and frankly, it's very popular to assume Microsoft is spying on you without knowing all the facts. Recall runs completely on-device, so it's not sending any of these screenshots back to Microsoft. That's why Copilot+ features aren't coming to any existing PCs. You need to meet the minimum requirements to run them locally.
You also have total control over it. You'll be asked if you want the feature turned on during Windows setup, you can easily pause it any time you want, you can exclude apps from appearing in Recall, and you can delete your entire Recall history with a button in settings.
Out of everything that was announced in the first wave of Copilot+ features, Recall was the only one that didn't ship, due to the controversy mentioned above. Microsoft reformed security and privacy in Recall, and currently, it's available in the Windows Insider program for Snapdragon X, Intel Lunar Lake, and AMD Ryzen AI 300 HX PCs.
Live Captions with real-time translation
Live Captions is exactly what it sounds like. You can take any video or livestream and it will give you captions in real-time. That in itself isn't new, but now, you also get real-time translation for those live captions. 44 languages can be translated into English, with support for Simplified Chinese also in testing right now.
Cocreator
Cocreator is a name for the feature that AI is probably best known for. You can use it to generate images or text. And remember, this is all happening on-device, so nothing is getting sent to the cloud for processing.
It's also working with you to create things. In Paint, you can start by making a rough drawing of something, and by using that along with a prompt, Cocreator will generate an image based on what it thinks you want. Any time you make adjustments to your drawings or the prompt, it adjusts its image as well.
There are also some features in the Photos app, like being able to restyle a photo.
Auto Super Resolution
Auto Super Resolution is a gaming feature. It improves both the resolution and frame rate of your games, and it promises not to impact performance. There have been promises like this in the past, so we'll see how it goes. After all, most Copilot+ PCs are going to have integrated graphics for the time being anyway.
New Windows Studio Effects
Windows Studio Effects was the first suite of features for AI PCs, debuting all the way back with the Surface Pro X. It allowed you to blur your background, reframe your video, adjust your gaze so it appeared you were looking at the camera, and more.
Now, it's going to do more things like adjust your lighting, and add more filters to you can have a more creative background. Again, the theme is that this is all happening on-device, which is apparently better than just letting Google Meet do it.
Adaptive Dimming and Adaptive Lock
These are features that we've seen OEMs use, but now they'll be baked into Windows. The OS will know when you look away and it will dim the screen, and it will lock the PC if you walk away. It can also wake the computer when you return, using Windows Hello to seamlessly log you back in.
Copilot
There's not too much to say about Copilot itself, since that's a feature we've had on Windows PCs for a little while now. However, with Copilot+ PCs, much of Copilot will be able to run on-device, thanks to the more powerful NPUs. Microsoft recently updated the Copilot app for Insiders so it runs natively instead of being a web app, which could play a part in this.
The second wave of features (coming soon to Windows Insiders)
Click to Do
Click to Do is an overlay that can go on top of what you're seeing, and it should be able to see what's on your screen and suggest actions based on it. For example, you might get suggestions to summarize text, to remove the background of an image, and so on. You'll be able to access this by hitting the Windows key and clicking your mouse, within Recall, and more.
Click To Do is already in testing with Windows Insiders with processors from all three major brands.
Improved Windows Search
The new Windows Search seems pretty neat, because it's a continuation of this idea that it shouldn't be harder to search your own PC than it is to search the internet. You won't have to remember what files are called or where they're located. You'll be able to use natural language to search for things that are within your files. You could search for a picture of yourself in a red shirt, the latest version of your resume, or something else.
Generative Fill and Erase in Paint
Generative Fill and Erase is pretty self-explanatory. You'll be able to remove objects from photos, and it will automatically fill in the background based on the context. These features are alsoa vailable for testing with Windows Insiders right now. Interestingly, though, generative erase is actually available to all Windows 11 PCs, not just Copilot models.
What's neat is that Microsoft seems to be taking the initiative of making Paint into a powerful image editing tool, rather than the basic drawing application that it once was.
Super Resolution in Photos
This is another one that's pretty self-explanatory, also because Microsoft isn't the first to do this. You'll be able to take a blurry image in Photos and upscale it. Microsoft says it can upscale the resolution by 8x, which will be pretty impressive if it works well. This feature is also already being tested with Windows Insiders.
Microsoft Copilot+ system requirements
Microsoft laid out three things that your computer will need in order to meet the Copilot+ requirements:
- An NPU capable of 40 TOPS or more
- 16GB RAM
- 256GB storage
No laptop shipped before June 18, 2024 meets theser requirements (particularly that first one), meaning your options are pretty limited. Three processor families are going to support this: Qualcomm Snapdragon X, Intel Lunar Lake, and AMD Strix Point. Qualcomm was first to the party, and currently, it's still the only option for Copilot+ officially. Both Intel and AMD PCs are only supported in the Windows Insider program at this time, though we should see wider availability in 2025.
The PCs will have a Copilot key on the keyboard and will ship with Windows 11 version 24H2, which has the AI goodies listed above.
There's one other thing to note. You do need an NPU capable of 40TOPS. If you've got a desktop with an Nvidia GeForceRTX 4090, which is capable of 1,321TOPS, you're out of luck, at least for now. It's not entirely clear if Microsoft plans to change that.
Copilot+ release date
The first wave of Copilot+ PCs was announced on May 20th, 2024 and began shipping on June 18th. All of these were powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon X series of processors.
AMD followed up shortly after with its Strix Point processors (known as AMD Ryzen AI 300 HX), which are now available, and then Intel introduced the Core Ultra Series 2 (Lunar Lake) models at IFA 2024 in September. Many laptops with these chips already are already on the market, but Copilot+ support will have to be enabled with a software update.
Microsoft began testing Copilot+ support for these Intel and AMD PCs in late November 2024, with most of the features being available to Windows Insiders. However, full availability has not been announced yet. You can likely expect it in the early weeks or months of 2025.
