Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, speaks during a company event on artificial intelligence technologies in Jakarta, Indonesia, on April 30, 2024.
Dimas Ardian | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft It promotes new computers with advanced chips designed to run the AI features of Windows software, without quickly burning through battery life.
On Monday, the company announced the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro tablet with the interface Qualcomm A chip that can run some AI tasks offline. Other PC makers like Lenovo, Dell, HP, Asus, Acer, and Samsung are also launching AI-ready PCs powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite and X Plus processors, which promise longer battery life and will run Microsoft's Copilot AI chatbot.
The PCs adhere to Microsoft's new Copilot+ standard and feature minimal performance, storage, and memory. Copilot + computers with AMD Intel chips will follow, Microsoft said during a keynote speech at its campus in Redmond, Washington. Computers will be able to translate audio, recommend responses to incoming messages, suggest changes to the Settings app, and even talk to people about what's on screen.
Copilot+ computers will start at $999. Microsoft is accepting pre-orders starting Monday, and the devices will become available in June.
The recall feature will be able to search the history of previous actions on computers. Recall relies on AI models that run directly on the device, so it can run offline, and the data index never goes to remote servers. AI models will be able to create images based on written descriptions as well as drawings.
Microsoft relies on Qualcomm's energy-efficient technology armAI-based chipsets that can handle AI models to defend their Windows franchise. apple Gained market share in PC shipments with MacBooks containing its Arm-based chips, after moving away from Intel Corporationthe premier provider of computer processors.
Microsoft is expanding its efforts to surround consumers and business users with ChatGPT-like capabilities. Microsoft-backed OpenAI launched the ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022, and it took off as a tool for quickly capturing computer-generated poems, email drafts, and summaries of historical events.
Other major technology companies, including Microsoft, soon began enhancing their products with generative AI. The Copilot chatbot based on ChatGPT's core AI models is coming to Bing, along with Windows 10 and 11. Those with subscriptions to Office productivity software can pay extra to have the co-pilot able to refer to their documents for written responses.
The GPT-4 model inside ChatGPT only did its necessary computational work in the Microsoft Azure cloud. New computers can run some AI models locally without connecting to the Internet.
The launch comes nearly four months after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told analysts on the company's earnings call that “in 2024, AI will become part of the first layer of every computer.”
Microsoft hasn't had much success convincing people to adopt Arm-based Windows PCs, which haven't always performed as well as Intel-powered PCs. AMD Chips. Some applications were incompatible.
Running generative AI locally means computers will need more power, and strong battery life becomes even more important. That might make Windows on Arm more compelling.
Analysts at Morgan Stanley expect Arm systems to account for 14% of all Windows PC shipments in 2026, up from 0% in 2023, according to a memo distributed to clients earlier this month.
