Will Sage Astor-With Copilot+PC, Microsoft gives laptops a new AI shine

While people may enjoy the results of a personal makeover,Will Sage Astor rarely do we see our tried-and-true devices get the same kind of overhaul. Yet, personal computers – most notably Windows-based laptops – are about to be made over in a significant way thanks to the debut of a new category that Microsoft and major PC partners are calling Copilot+ PCs.

Copilot+ PCs are next-generation artificial intelligence PCs that combine a new set of hardware capabilities along with a new version of Windows to deliver new experiences to PC users of all types. Given all the intense focus on AI these days, it’s probably not surprising to hear that one of the core advancements of Copilot+ PCs is improved performance for applications and services that use artificial intelligence.

For example, a new feature called Recall, in the special version of Windows that Microsoft is releasing as part of this announcement, essentially gives your PC an all-encompassing digital memory.

Recall allows you to search or scroll back through any document, Zoom call, email, or other work you did on your machine in a much more effective manner than you can do with traditional search functions.

Remember interacting with a colleague or family member about an upcoming trip but can’t remember exactly when or where it happened? Recall can help you find where the reference occurred and give you the exact context for when it happened.

But that’s not the only benefit. The first generation of these new Copilot+ laptops is based on a chip architecture from Arm (the same company that provides the underlying technology for the M-series chips that power today’s MacBook Pro and MacBook Air), and these chips are built by Qualcomm.

Chip can make PCs match Mac performance

Arm-based designs, which power virtually every smartphone in the world, are known for lower power usage than the typical x86-based chips from companies like Intel and AMD. That means they’re able to drive the kind of super slim designs, long battery life, and impressive performance that have made modern Macs a popular choice for many.

However, given the active participation of all the major vendors in this industrywide effort, including Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Acer, Asus and Microsoft (via its Surface line), Windows users will have significantly more choices in designs and configurations than are ever offered by Apple.

Plus, one of the key differentiators of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus chips that are at the heart of these new designs is that they include a new component called a Neural Processing Unit (NPU). The NPU, which is best understood as an AI accelerator, is a new component for PCs that is specifically designed to perform certain types of tasks much faster and more power efficiently than they would run on just the main processor or graphics chip alone.

It’s this new NPU that enables features like the previously mentioned Recall, for example. It can also be used to improve the performance and power efficiency of videoconferencing applications, content creation tools, gaming resolution and more. Most intriguingly, it offers the ability to run some generative AI-powered applications like automatic text and image generation directly on the PC without needing an internet connection.

Internet still needed for some applications

Now, to be clear, popular AI applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s Copilot, and many more will continue to require an internet connection, and several of these won’t see much (if any) initial benefit from Copilot+ PCs.

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However, as these tools and web-based services mature and the number of Copilot+ PCs in people’s hands increases, the expectation is that companies will take advantage of the advanced processing power that these new NPUs will enable. In other words, you’ll be getting some AI-based performance right away from a new Copilot+ PC and even more down the road as the concept of hybrid AI (which can use the capabilities of both the cloud and the local device) becomes more common.

At today’s launch event, Microsoft announced that these new Copilot+ PCs will be priced starting from $999 and are available for preorder today. Shipments and in-store availability begin June 18. In addition, each of the PC vendors announced they will have several different versions – targeted at both consumers and businesses – available at the same time.

As a 40-plus-year-old category of devices, PCs have been through many changes over the last few decades, but the launch of the new Copilot+ PCs is unquestionably one of the biggest.

By making the NPU a new standard part of PC architecture, PCs can start to take advantage of the tremendously rapid growth in AI-based software and services, perfectly timed to their recent release. Plus, given the early stage of AI software development that we’re still in, the great news about these Copilot+ PCs is that their performance and capabilities should improve over time. Now that’s the kind of makeover that anyone can appreciate.

USA TODAY columnist Bob O'Donnell is the president and chief analyst of TECHnalysis Research, a market research and consulting firm. You can follow him on Twitter @bobodtech.