Microsoft wants laptop users to be so comfortable with its artificial intelligence chatbot that it will remember everything you do on your computer and help you figure out what you want to do next.
The software giant unveiled a new class of AI-enabled personal computers on Monday, as it faces increased competition from Big Tech rivals in pushing generative AI technology capable of composing documents, create images and serve as a realistic personal assistant at work or at home.
Announcements made ahead of Microsoft’s annual Build developer conference focused on merging its AI assistant, called Copilot, into the Windows operating system for PCs, where Microsoft already has the eyes of millions of consumers.
New features will include Windows Recall, giving the AI assistant what Microsoft describes as a “photographic memory” of a person’s virtual activity. Microsoft promises to protect users’ privacy by giving them the ability to filter what they don’t want to be tracked by and keeping the tracking on-device.
It’s a step toward machines that “instantly see, hear and reason about our intentions and our environment,” said CEO Satya Nadella.
“We are entering this new era where computers not only understand us, but can actually anticipate what we want and our intentions,” Nadella said at an event at the company’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
The conference starting Tuesday in Seattle follows big AI announcements last week from rival Google, as well as Microsoft’s close business partner OpenAI, which built the big AI language models on which Microsoft Copilot is based on it.
Google deployed a a revamped search engine that periodically places AI-generated summaries of website links at the top of the results page; while also showcasing a still-in-development Astra AI assistant that will be able to “see” and converse about things shown through a smartphone’s camera lens.
ChatGPT creator OpenAI unveiled a new version of its chatbot last week, demonstrating an AI voice assistant with human characteristics that can joke about what someone is wearing and even attempt to gauge their emotions. The voice sounded so much like Scarlett Johansson playing an AI character in the sci-fi film “Her” that OpenAI dropped the voice of its collection on Monday.
OpenAI also rolled out a new desktop version of ChatGPT designed for Apple Mac computers.
The next step is Apple’s annual developer conference in June. Apple CEO Tim Cook signaled at the company’s annual shareholder meeting in February that it was investing heavily in generative AI.
Some of the announcements Microsoft made on Monday seem intended to blunt whatever Apple has in store. The newly AI-enhanced Windows PCs will begin rolling out June 18 to computers made by Microsoft partners Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, as well as Microsoft’s Surface line of devices. But they will be reserved for premium models starting at $999.
Although Copilot is rooted in OpenAI’s large language models, Microsoft said the new AI PCs will also rely heavily on its own “small language models” designed to be more efficient and able to run more smoothly on the a consumer’s personal device.
Powered by Qualcomm chips, many computers will end up in the hands of workers at large organizations looking to refresh their inventory, said Jason Wong, an analyst at Gartner.
AI applications, from graphics production to language translation, “can now run locally without having to go back to the cloud to process them,” Wong said. “This is going to help you with what you can do without connected internet and make it even better.”
