Microsoft Debuts AI PCs That Will ‘Recall‘ Everything You Do

Following last week’s updates from OpenAI and Google, it was Microsoft’s turn to show off its AI prowess during its annual developer conference on Monday, headlined by its new CoPilot+ laptops and Surface Pro tablets built around generative AI.

We’re excited to introduce Copilot+ PCs, the world’s fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built. With these Copilot+ PCs, you’ll be able to do things you can’t do on any other PC. https://t.co/mhvTrO1l1N

— Microsoft (@Microsoft) May 20, 2024

Microsoft said the new Copilot-enabled computers will remember and later be able to find anything displayed on screen—including emails, websites, and applications—with a new Recall feature that stores local snapshots of everything the user does. Copilot+ PCs can also generate and refine AI images on-device using Cocreator, and translate over forty languages with Live Captions.

The new Copilot+ PCs also promise extended “all-day” battery life even though they are capable of 40+ trillion operations per second (TOPS).

“With Recall, you can access virtually what you have seen or done on your PC in a way that feels like having photographic memory,” Microsoft said. “This helps you remember things you may have forgotten so you can find what you’re looking for quickly and intuitively by simply using the cues you remember.”

The prospect of Windows constantly recording everything users see and do, making it possible to find even snippets of text that appeared on screen quickly, sparked both praise and concern. Many tech pundits praised it as a “cool” feature.

Wow @Microsoft annoucing their new CoPilot + PC with this recall feature that lets you find ANYTHING that you may have searched for or done on your computer. So cool! #microsoftevent pic.twitter.com/YBDkCakrTJ

— iJustine (@ijustine) May 20, 2024

Others saw it as a dangerous precedent.

Talk About Surveillance Technology Dangers!
“Windows 11 Recall AI feature will record EVERYTHING you do on your PC!” 👀 #privacy https://t.co/c35zV7diHy

— CyberChick (@warriors_mom) May 20, 2024

Commentators compared Microsoft’s new Recall feature to Rewind—now Limitless AI—which developed a similar AI tool that used persistent screen recordings to make it possible to find past actions quickly.

its rewind using edge, sounds like all processing will happen on device https://t.co/FHUXMB2tuH

— George from 🕹prodmgmt.world (@nurijanian) May 20, 2024

Beginning June 18, Copilot+ PCs will be available from Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung.

“[The] interesting thing, which is if you sort of take all of what we’ve been talking about with AI, it all came about because of the abundance of compute, all primarily in the cloud,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told the Wall Street Journal ahead of Monday’s announcements. “So that’s what created the GPT-4 for example, which essentially changed the world.

“Now what happened in the cloud is going to come to the [Microsoft] Edge and the Edge that first needs to be reinvented before we talk about everything else is the PC,” he continued. “That’s what I think of as the ‘AI PC’ or the Copilot+ PCs.”

As Nadella explained, the new Copilot+ PCs will utilize cloud computing and internal computing, using a new processor called the Neural Processing Unit (NPU).

“So if you want to build any AI application, you have to have an accelerator, just like we have in the cloud to be able to run these matrix math multiplications fast in order to drive our AI features,” Nadella said. “And that’s what the NPU does.”

To make accessing Copilot even easier, Microsoft in January announced that a dedicated hardware AI key would be coming to Windows 11 keyboards.

“Every Copilot+ PC comes with your personal powerful AI agent that is just a single tap away on keyboards with the new Copilot key,” Microsoft wrote at the time. “Copilot will now have the full application experience customers have been asking for in a streamlined, simple yet powerful and personal design.”

Rumors around Microsoft’s plans to add Copilot to Windows began circulating in December. The official update, code-named “Hudson Valley,” replaces Microsoft’s Cortana virtual assistant, which was discontinued last August.

Like Google, and Amazon, Microsoft has invested heavily in generative AI, including over $10 billion investment in ChatGPT creator, OpenAI, according to a report by the New York Times. Leveraging its partnership with OpenAI, Copilot comes with several of the AI developer’s products, including Dall-E 3 for image generation.

“Copilot puts the most advanced AI models at your fingertips,” the tech giant said. “In the coming weeks, get access to the latest models, including GPT-4o, from our partners at OpenAI, so you can have voice conversations that feel more natural.”

Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Decrypt.

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

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