💣 Microsoft announces Copilot PCs

ALSO: OpenAI strikes News Corp deal and EU passes the AI Act

Estimated Read Time: 5 minutes

We’re having back-to-back AI events. After OpenAI and Google dropped their bombshells, Microsoft is back to steal the spotlight with a focus on how we’ll use AI with PCs in the future. This is the start of AI being built into your computer.

• 🤯Microsoft announces Copilot PCs.

• 📰OpenAI strikes a deal with News Corp.

• 🌍The EU’s AI Act officially passed.

🤯Microsoft announces Copilot PCs

What happened: Just like the reports said, Microsoft has announced a line of PCs with integrated Copilot/OpenAI features. Including a dedicated Copilot button.

The details: 

• The PCs will have a locally powered AI using NPUs (Neural Processing Units). While it can also use cloud-powered AI, many of the most common AI features will be locally powered.

• Copilot PCs will feature a dedicated key on the keyboard for AI assistance.

• An example of locally powered AI is the enhanced video and audio features including automatic lighting adjustments, creative filters, and improved noise cancellation.

• The PCs will be made by multiple manufacturers, such as Asus and Dell. So this is a type of PC, but not a specific PC itself.

• Microsoft also announced new Surface tablets and laptops.

• Applications can use the local AI. Examples are apps like LiquidText for document annotations and djay Pro for music mixing. I can already imagine Photoshop and Coding applications using the AI too.

• Superresolution will use AI to enhance images and video.

• Another use for superresolution is to enhance the visual quality and framerates of games like The Witcher 3 and God of War. (I wonder how good this will be.) These features are exclusive to Copilot PCs.

The biggest feature is Recall: Windows will watch your screen and remember everything that happens.

• “Recall” is a feature which allows you to bring up the AI’s memory of everything that’s happened on your screen. Forget about something you typed or scheduled? Recall can remember.

• Recall works by taking images of your active screen every few seconds. This is also sparking new privacy concerns (who’s getting all this data?).

• You can also select a screenshot and Recall can find and open the document in the screenshot.

Full Copilot integration. You can use most of the essential features from Copilot locally on your PC, stuff like summarizing emails, reminding you of events, and bouncing back ideas. Here’s some other cool stuff you can do:

• You can also use Copilot to create live captions and translations for text and video on screen.

• An example shown was dragging an image from one window to another, and asking Copilot what was happening in the image.

• The PCs themselves claim to be some of the fastest available in performance.

• Copilot will also help troubleshoot common problems with your PC, such as sound drivers not working. (Wow, they just reduced their customer service costs.)

• An example they showed is if you receive an email asking for a specific graph/deck, Copilot can automatically send an email back using the proper graph/deck.

Why it matters: WOW. That was a lot to go through. But it’s mostly good features. There’s definitely some privacy concerns, but overall this is a step in making AI a fully fledged life assistant. I can already imagine Recall coming in handy if I forgot to save my work and it could recreate what I made. Ball’s in your court now, Apple. (Their event in June 10th, so keep an eye out.)

🤖 Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said AI will not replace you, someone using AI will. This happened in a recent interview. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s what most AI experts have been saying (including myself). Huang then went on to say you need to start using AI right now. Learn AI skills while you still can. Learn tools, workflows, and become irreplaceable. I couldn’t agree more.

💪 Google Gemini quietly updated Gemini Advanced (the paid tier) to Gemini Pro 1.5. This is a straight upgrade. Faster response times, sharper replies, and just general improvements all around (too many to list here). It’s also available in more 150+ more regions. It’s unknown why Google kept so quiet about the update. Maybe they didn’t want to overhype it?

📰OpenAI strikes a deal with News Corp

What happened: OpenAI just struck a deal with News Corp to include their content in ChatGPT for responses and for training.

The details:

• The deal will give OpenAI access to all of News Corp’s current and previous content.

• The content will be used for several things: ChatGPT can train on the data. And any info included in these articles are now available to ChatGPT’s knowledge base. ChatGPT can display their content in its responses.

• This will make ChatGPT significantly more accurate on current events.

• The deal is multiple years long and worth around $250M.

• News Corp owns a lot of news outlets including: The Wall Street Times, MarketWatch, the New York Post, and many others. (Seriously there’s a ton.)

Why it matters: I’d argue that ChatGPT getting all of its answers from mainstream media is a bad thing. But first… the AI needs to be accurate. ChatGPT struggles with accuracy and pulling up the most recent events. Hopefully this is a good step in fixing these problems. We’ll get current news results to our queries now.

🌍The EU’s AI Act officially passed

What happened: The European Union's landmark AI Act will start next month, setting a new global standard for AI regulation. This is a massive step in regulating AI, and Big Tech wasn’t happy about it.

The details: 

• The AI Act aims to keep AI companies transparent and accountable.

• Restrictions include bans on real-time biometric surveillance except for serious crimes.

• The Act prohibits social scoring, predictive policing, and untargeted facial recognition.

• The law will affect companies worldwide who use EU customer data.

• There are fines ranging from 7M euros to 35M euros. But something tells me these aren’t high enough.

• Full application of the law will be in 2026, but general purpose AI models must start adhering to the law in 12 months.

• Big Tech continues to criticize the Act, saying it will stifle innovation. They already pushed hard against the law coming into fruition.

Why this matters: There’s a lot of good stuff here. Implementing the law will be another major step, but this is a lot better than the US’s voluntary approach. Meanwhile, China focuses their AI regulations on social stability and state control. A middle-ground which emphasizes protecting people is nice to see.

🦾 The iron giants

Source: Midjourney

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