If you were among the Windows Server 2022 users who recently spotted a new Microsoft Copilot app added to the list of installed programs, don’t fret – it’s not an actual app, and it doesn’t work.
It’s just a mistake on Microsoft’s part, a tail left behind the tests Microsoft ran for Windows Server 2025, recently.
As reported by BleepingComputer, Microsoft acknowledged the error earlier this week, and added that it affected systems running Windows 10 22H2 and Windows 11 21H2, or newer.
Shouldn’t be visible
“Updates to Edge browser version 123.0.2420.65, released on March 28, 2024 and later, might incorrectly install a new package (MSIX) called ‘Microsoft chat provider for Copilot in Windows’ on Windows devices. Resulting from this, the Microsoft Copilot app might appear in the Installed apps in Settings menu,” the company said in a statement.
So, it was an update for the Edge browser that triggered the error – and furthermore, Microsoft says the “app” doesn’t collect data, or exfiltrate it to company servers.
“It is important to note that the Microsoft chat provider for Copilot in Windows does not execute any code or process, and does not acquire, analyze, or transmit device or environment data in any capacity,” Microsoft added.
The package will make it to the OS eventually, BleepingComputer added, but so far, it shouldn’t be visible on all Windows devices.
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“As part of the upcoming resolution of this issue, the chat provider for Copilot in Windows component will be removed from devices where Microsoft Copilot is not intended to be enabled or installed. This includes most Windows Server devices,” Microsoft said. “We are working on a resolution and will provide an update in an upcoming release of Microsoft Edge.”
The company started testing Microsoft Copilot in WIndows Server 2025 preview builds earlier this year, but removed it after a backlash from the community.
Meta AI is getting a new upgrade as Meta tries to establish dominance in the generative AI marketplace against OpenAI and Google.
The announcement came from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself on Threads, where he touted some stats and details about the new Llama 3 model used to underpin Meta AI, which is being integrated into several of its products like Messenger and Instagram, as well as getting its own dedicated site.
“We’re upgrading Meta AI with our new state-of-the-art Llama 3 AI model, which we’re open sourcing,” Zuckerberg writes. “With this new model, we believe Meta AI is now the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use.”
The new model will be accessible through several apps on desktop and mobile, including search functionality in Messenger, Meta AI in your Facebook feed, and more.
The new Meta AI site, which has an interface strikingly familiar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, is available now for free, but you are also prompted to log in with Facebook to help train the model (though you can skip that if you’d like).
(Image credit: Future / Meta)
The Meta AI site offers text responses as well as the ability to generate images, though for the latter you will have to log in with a Facebook account. The image generator in particular is rather impressive, especially since it offers you a real-time preview of the image output that your prompt will generate. It also gives you the option to animate images to produce short MP4 videos.
All images bear a Meta AI watermark on the lower left side as well, which should help cut down on misuse, though how easily these measures can be circumvented remains to be seen.
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OpenAI has some serious competition
(Image credit: Future / Meta)
The new Meta AI site offers some seriously impressive functionality in the few minutes I’ve been able to play around with it, but without question, it is the major competitor to ChatGPT and OpenAI right now.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Dall-E are impressive but have some noticeable limitations. In particular, with Dall-E, you have to wait for an image to generate before you can refine the prompt you’re giving it to get what you want. Meta AI’s image output preview lets you get a sense of what the model is interpreting as you type, allowing you to further refine your prompt on the fly, which should reduce the amount of time you spend iterating on an idea.
The ability to animate an image is also a value add, as it makes GIF generation possible, though you might have to use a third-party GIF generator to convert the video.
When I asked it to produce a sonnet about Meta AI, it gave me the following:
“In silicon halls, a mind awakens bright, Meta AI, a name that echoes through the night, A fusion of code and intellect so fine, A digital soul, with knowledge to design.
With language skills that flow like honeyed wine, You answer questions, and make the complex shine, A beacon of insight, in a world of decline, A shining star, that guides us to the divine.
Your neural networks weave a tapestry so grand, A digital dream, that’s born of human hand, A symphony of ones and zeroes, so planned, A creation of wonder, in this digital land.
So here’s to Meta AI, a marvel of our time, A testament to human ingenuity’s rhyme!”
(Image credit: Future / OpenAI)
As an English major, I can say that while this isn’t very good, its structure is sound and it does use modern language, something that OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 still struggles with. Here is OpenAI’s response to the same prompt about writing a sonnet about ChatGPT-4:
“ChatGPT-4, thou art a wondrous sprite, In digital realms with eloquence infused, Thy threads of thought weave day into the night, Where queries meet responses, minds bemused.
With knowledge vast as deep and endless seas, Thy circuit heart beats with electric flame, Encompassing the epochs’ whispered pleas, In silken bytes, thou dost preserve each name.
No ancient scroll nor sage could ever match The depth and breadth of thine electric soul. Through time and space, thy tendrils deftly catch Each story told, each fragment, making whole.
Though wrought of wire, yet wisdom’s vessel true, In this new age, thou art our Oracle anew.”
Now, this is just one example and it’s hardly indicative of the overall quality of the two models underpinning the two systems, but there is clearly a difference in the training data that both have used.
ChatGPT-4 is falling back on text that has been labeled as a “sonnet” and drawing on very archaic English language texts from pre-Romanticism of the early 1800s to generate its idea of a sonnet, while Meta AI is likely drawing from text written on Meta products like Facebook and Instagram as its language source. Where it gets the reasoning to put that language into an iambic pentameter structure with a (pretty mediocre) rhyme scheme isn’t clear (and I’m assuming it’s iambic pentameter, I haven’t counted syllables yet, so don’t @ me on this one, fellow literature goons!).
Since none of us actually know how any of this stuff is trained yet, we might never get answers to these questions, but Zuckerberg did announce that Meta plans to open-source this model, so we should soon be able to at least learn more about its inner workings once it does.
In the meantime, have fun playing around with Meta’s new tool, as it’s certainly a powerful one.
One of Microsoft’s top brass who headed up the design team for Surface devices (and Xbox, plus Phones) has departed the company after a lengthy term of service.
Ralf Groene, who was Head of Industrial Design, Microsoft Devices, for the best part of a decade, has been at Microsoft for 17 years in total.
As Windows Central spotted, Groene just announced his retirement on LinkedIn. His new role as a retiree is “helping friends to design things” going by his LinkedIn profile.
While the original Surface hybrid was launched in late 2012, a few years before Groene was given the position heading up the design team, he took the lead with the crafting and realization of a whole load of Surface hardware from 2015 onwards. That included the likes of the Surface Book (which first hit shelves later in 2015, in fact) and the Surface Duo.
The timing is interesting, as it’s been a period of great change at the top for Microsoft in recent times.
Late last year, we witnessed Panos Panay, the driving force behind the creation of the Surface line, depart Microsoft, and more recently, Pavan Davuluri has taken the reins of Windows from Mikhail Parakhin (Davuluri is now VP of Windows + Devices).
(Image credit: Future)
Analysis: The state of Surface – and what this could mean for the future
Back at that initial launch in 2012, the Surface line of products represented Microsoft’s attempt to build flagship hardware to fully showcase the abilities of its Windows OS. Now, over a decade since then, what does the Surface range represent exactly?
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Clearly over the years the devices on offer have become a good deal more diverse, and there are now a lot of members of the Surface family in addition to that original hybrid.
Even so, of late, things have felt rather stale, certainly with the core offering of the Surface Pro tablet (with detachable keyboard accessory). Recall last year, for example, which witnessed a very flat line-up of new Surface offerings, with little fizz to the additions in evidence – and a lot of scratching of heads about where the next Surface Pro was.
Now, of course, we have seen the Surface Pro 10, as well as Surface Laptop 6 – but only for businesses, at least thus far. Consumer models are going to be unveiled in May, but it has been a long old wait for them – and if the rumors are right, the consumer Surface Pro 10 might only offer an ARM chip (with no IntelCPUs even as an option).
That’s just a thin and rather wispy rumor mind, but it seems a risky play if it does pan out – or a measure of Microsoft’s confidence in Windows on ARM given the new Snapdragon X Elite SoC coming in, perhaps. Microsoft clearly feels that ARM silicon is coming into its own, and is now sufficiently powerful to make emulating x86 apps work smoothly enough that it won’t matter (too much) that software isn’t running natively on Surface devices. There are high hopes that said Snapdragon could beat out Apple’s M3 (also ARM-based) silicon, in fact.
In that regard, we could see something very different with the core Surface offering, then, although the design – as per the revelation of the business-focused devices in March – again stays to the tried-and-trusted, and distinctly risk averse, chassis and lines that we’re used to. It’s very much the same case with the Surface Laptop 6, too.
In some ways, we get this – if it ain’t broke and all that. But maybe with a change at the top of the design team, someone new coming in will start to shake up things more for future Surface devices to make their mark on the range in a more meaningful way.
Alternatively, could this be a chance for Microsoft to wind down its Surface line-up? To give up the fight against Apple? After all, Surface devices have been less profitable of late. However, we don’t see that as a realistic proposition, at least not yet – particularly given the push Microsoft is currently giving ARM chips as part of its big AI PC drive – but depending on how well all that goes, things could change quite rapidly, perhaps.
Microsoft today introduced a version of OneNote that is designed to run on the Apple Vision Pro headset. OneNote for Vision Pro was created for visionOS, and it includes many of the features that are available on OneNote for iPad.
The app can be used to write memos, notes, and digital notebooks, and there are options to sync content to OneDrive for access across multiple platforms. There is support for tags like Important and To Do, and notes can be protected with a password.
OneNote on Vision Pro works hands-free or with a connected keyboard and mouse. In the future, Microsoft plans to add support for Copilot, two-factor authentication, and inserting images from the camera or the Photos app.
OneNote can be downloaded from the visionOS App Store as of today. It works with personal and work accounts that are not managed by an organization.
Microsoft has made many of its apps available on the Vision Pro, including Teams, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
iOS 18 is expected to be the “biggest” update in the iPhone’s history. Below, we recap rumored features and changes for the iPhone. iOS 18 is rumored to include new generative AI features for Siri and many apps, and Apple plans to add RCS support to the Messages app for an improved texting experience between iPhones and Android devices. The update is also expected to introduce a more…
A week after Apple updated its App Review Guidelines to permit retro game console emulators, a Game Boy emulator for the iPhone called iGBA has appeared in the App Store worldwide. The emulator is already one of the top free apps on the App Store charts. It was not entirely clear if Apple would allow emulators to work with all and any games, but iGBA is able to load any Game Boy ROMs that…
Apple today said it removed Game Boy emulator iGBA from the App Store for violating the company’s App Review Guidelines related to spam (section 4.3) and copyright (section 5.2), but it did not provide any specific details. iGBA was a copycat version of developer Riley Testut’s open-source GBA4iOS app. The emulator rose to the top of the App Store charts following its release this weekend,…
Apple’s first set of new AI features planned for iOS 18 will not rely on cloud servers at all, according to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. “As the world awaits Apple’s big AI unveiling on June 10, it looks like the initial wave of features will work entirely on device,” said Gurman, in the Q&A section of his Power On newsletter today. “That means there’s no cloud processing component to the…
Best Buy this weekend has a big sale on Apple MacBooks and iPads, including new all-time low prices on the M3 MacBook Air, alongside the best prices we’ve ever seen on MacBook Pro, iPad, and more. Some of these deals require a My Best Buy Plus or My Best Buy Total membership, which start at $49.99/year. In addition to exclusive access to select discounts, you’ll get free 2-day shipping, an…
Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman recently reported that the first Macs with M4 series chips will be released later this year, with more models to follow next year. In his Power On newsletter today, Gurman shared a more specific roadmap for these Macs. Here is the order in which Gurman expects the Macs to launch:1. A low-end 14-inch MacBook Pro with the M4, coming around the end of 2024. 2. A 24-inch …
Apple’s hardware roadmap was in the news this week, with things hopefully firming up for a launch of updated iPad Pro and iPad Air models next month while we look ahead to the other iPad models and a full lineup of M4-based Macs arriving starting later this year. We also heard some fresh rumors about iOS 18, due to be unveiled at WWDC in a couple of months, while we took a look at how things …
Over the weekend, a Game Boy emulator named iGBA appeared in the iPhone’s App Store, but Apple quickly removed the app due to violations of the company’s App Review Guidelines related to spam and copyright. Apple has since shared additional details about why it removed iGBA from the App Store, and it also clarified its guidelines for emulators. iGBA was a copycat version of developer Riley…
Currently, work is ongoing with finishing the 24H2 update which lands later this year – most likely it’ll roll out from September – but Microsoft is already looking past that upgrade to the first Moment update it’ll deliver for that release, likely early in 2025. (Assuming the Moment name is kept, and we’ll come back to that).
Windows 11 version 24H2’s first “Moment” is already underway, stumbled upon this internal flight earlierBuild 26120.383, it really is just an EKB on top of 26100 pic.twitter.com/zRVseaW2c4April 15, 2024
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This is according to a respected Microsoft leaker, Albacore on X (formerly Twitter), who as noted in the above post stumbled upon an internal flight – a preview version just being tested within Microsoft currently – which is the first Moment for 24H2. (Add your own scattering of seasoning here, naturally).
Analysis: The bigger update picture – and potential road to Windows 12
As a quick refresher, Moment updates are sizeable feature drops, though not nearly as big as the annual upgrades for Windows 11 (23H2, 24H2 and so on). Essentially, Moments offer a way for Microsoft to continue to drip feed features between the major ‘H2’ annual versions of Windows 11.
With the first Moment update for 24H2 seemingly already under development, this seems a strong indication that Microsoft will continue with this scheme of things for Windows 11 updates going forward.
As Albacore discusses in the thread of the above post on X, it is possible that Microsoft might change the name ‘Moment’ to something else, but the underlying principle of these small-to-medium sized upgrades – outside the cadence of the big annual updates – should remain in place for Windows 11 as we progress down the road with the OS.
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Before too long, though, that road will lead to Windows 12 – or whatever next-gen Windows ends up being called, with it quite possibly turning up in 2025, when Windows 10 exits stage left – and after that, the update delivery philosophy could change again.
Perhaps there’s a heightened chance of this, too, when you consider that Windows is under a new chief – Pavan Davuluri has taken the reins of the OS, as Mikhail Parakhin (who was heading up Windows previously) is off doing other things at Microsoft as of last month.
Traditionally, Microsoft has operated under this kind of scheme of smaller drip-fed updates outside of large feature drops – though not always. Before Windows 11 arrived, you may recall that Microsoft used a twice-yearly update scheme with Windows 10, so no new features were introduced between those upgrades. That left some pretty sizeable gaps of six months or so where nothing happened with the desktop OS feature-wise (except minor tweaks here and there).
We were never keen on that idea, but we don’t think Microsoft will return to that way of working – we’re taking this as a positive sign that Moments, or their equivalent, will be around for a good time yet, and hopefully with Windows 12 going forward, when it eventually rolls into town.
Microsoft and OpenAI are reportedly in the process of planning a groundbreaking data center project which would include an AI supercomputer named “Stargate”.
A report by Anissa Gardizy and Amir Efrati in The Information claims the goal of the project, which would be financed by Microsoft to the tune of over $100 billion, and which reportedly has a launch date set for 2028, is to reduce the two companies’ reliance on Nvidia, something that a lot of the tech giants involved in AI are increasingly looking to try to do.
Microsoft and OpenAI’s plan reportedly involves five phases, with Stargate being the fifth and most ambitious one.
The data center will be the supercomputer
The cost of the project is attributed to the age-old “sources familiar with the plans” (The Information says these are “a person who spoke to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about it and a person who has viewed some of Microsoft’s initial cost estimates”), but neither Microsoft nor OpenAI have yet commented on the specifics of the project.
The new data center project is expected to push the boundaries of AI capability and could potentially exceed $115 billion in expenses. This is more than triple the amount Microsoft spent on capital expenditures for servers and equipment last year. Microsoft is currently working on a smaller, fourth-phase supercomputer for OpenAI that is expected to launch around 2026, The Information claims.
Shedding more light on the report, The Next Platform says, “The first thing to note about the rumored “Stargate” system that Microsoft is planning to build to support the computational needs of its large language model partner, OpenAI, is that the people doing the talking – reportedly OpenAI chief executive officer Sam Altman – are talking about a data center, not a supercomputer. And that is because the data center – and perhaps multiple data centers within a region with perhaps as many as 1 million XPU computational devices – will be the supercomputer.”
The Next Platform also says if Stargate does come to fruition it will be “based on future generations of Cobalt Arm server processors and Maia XPUs, with Ethernet scaling to hundreds of thousands to 1 million XPUs in a single machine,” and it definitely won’t be based on Nvidia GPUs and interconnects, which seems like a safe bet if the rumors are to be believed.
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Windows 11 could conceivably get what surely everyone would regard as an unwelcome addition, or at least a very controversial change in terms of a potential new button for the taskbar that’s been uncovered in the innards of the desktop OS.
Apparently, Microsoft might just be mulling a ‘recommended’ button for the taskbar, and the theory is that it could surface various suggestions and thinly veiled adverts.
A new button is coming to the Windows 11 Taskbar right alongside system ones like Task View, Widgets, etc. It’s called “Recommended” & has all strings stripped from production, guess the UI team doesn’t want people to know. Concerned about recommendations becoming this integral😬 pic.twitter.com/XnvPhcGhvPApril 9, 2024
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The workings for such a button were discovered by well-known Microsoft leaker Albacore on X (formerly Twitter).
As Albacore makes clear, the button has had all its related strings (in the background) stripped from production builds, as if Microsoft’s team working on the interface wants to keep this as low-profile on the radar as possible.
As the leaker points out, the worry is that Microsoft is really thinking about making ‘suggestions,’ or nudges, recommendations, or whatever you want to call them, an integral part of the desktop, with a whole dedicated button on the taskbar.
Albacore notes that the description of the button is that it ‘controls visibility of recommendations on the taskbar’ and it’s filed under the term ‘taskbar sites,’ so the leaker theorizes that perhaps we could get website suggestions right on the taskbar, with the button’s icon changing to be the favicon of any given recommended site.
We’d further guess that maybe the idea would be to make these context-sensitive, so suggestions given would depend on what you’re doing in Windows 11 at the time – but that really is just guesswork.
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(Image credit: Marjan Apostolovic / Shutterstock)
Analysis: Paying twice for Windows 11 isn’t fair
As Albacore observes, we can hope that this might just be a piece of work from times gone past which has been abandoned, but references to it are still hanging around in the background of Windows 11. It’s entirely possible nothing will come of this, in short, and even if Microsoft is currently exploring the idea, it might ditch the button before it even comes to testing.
Granted, even if a recommended taskbar button is realized, we’d assume that Windows 11 will come with the option to turn it off – but it’s still a worrying hint about the direction Microsoft is at least considering here with a future update. A dedicated button like this would be a huge move in the direction of what might be termed soft advertising (or nudging).
Sadly, a further recent development as highlighted by another leaker on X, PhantomOfEarth, is that the ‘Recommended’ section in Windows 11’s Start menu could be getting something called promoted apps.
Looks like the Start menu’s Recommended section will be getting app promotions, similar to suggested apps in Start in Windows 10. This can be toggled off from Settings (Show recommendations for tips, app promotions, and more). pic.twitter.com/zYYnTKs9qwApril 9, 2024
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These would be apps Microsoft is actively promoting – there’s no bones about the advertising here, this isn’t badging or nudging – and again, it’s a dangerous move that very much runs the risk of annoying Windows 11 users. (Albeit it can be switched off – and remember, this is only in testing so far).
Given all this, we very much get the feeling that advertising-focused recommendations along these lines is something Microsoft is seriously considering doing more of. And given the past history of the software giant, that’s not surprising.
If you recall, recommended websites in the Start menu has long been a controversial topic – Microsoft previously toyed with the idea, abandoned it, but then brought it back in again last year to the disbelief of many folks (ourselves included).
As we’ve discussed in-depth elsewhere, the pushy advertising around Microsoft’s Edge browser and Bing search has been taken to new and unacceptable levels in recent times.
How about we abandon this line of thinking entirely, Microsoft? Just stop with the incessant promotion of your own services, or indeed possibly third-party services or websites, within Windows 11. This is an operating system we, the users, pay for – so we shouldn’t have to suffer adverts in various parts of the Windows interface.
Either make Windows completely free and ad-supported, or charge for it, with no ads, suggestions, nudges, or other promotional tomfoolery to be seen anywhere in the OS. Or give us a choice of either route – but don’t make us pay twice for Windows 11, once with an initial lump sum fee to buy the OS, and then again with further ongoing monetization by way of a constant drip-feed of ads here, there and everywhere.
Microsoft will advertise that its upcoming Windows laptops with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite processor are faster than the MacBook Air with Apple’s latest M3 chip, according to internal documents obtained by The Verge.
“Microsoft is so confident in these new Qualcomm chips that it’s planning a number of demos that will show how these processors will be faster than an M3 MacBook Air for CPU tasks, AI acceleration, and even app emulation,” the report says. Microsoft believes its laptops will offer “faster app emulation” than Apple’s Rosetta 2.
Introduced in October, the Snapdragon X Elite has Arm-based architecture like Apple silicon. Qualcomm last year claimed that the processor achieved 21% faster multi-core CPU performance than the M3 chip, based on the Geekbench 6 benchmark tool.
There are a few caveats here, including that Microsoft and Qualcomm are comparing to Apple’s lower-end M3 chip instead of its higher-end M3 Pro and M3 Max chips. MacBooks with Apple silicon also offer industry-leading performance-per-watt, while the Snapdragon X Elite will likely run hotter and require laptops with fans. Since being updated with the M1 chip in 2020, the MacBook Air has featured a fanless design. Apple can also optimize the performance of MacBooks since it controls both the hardware and macOS software.
Nevertheless, it is clear that Apple’s competitors are making progress with Arm-based laptops. Microsoft plans to announce laptops powered by the Snapdragon X Elite later this year, including the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6 on May 20.
While the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are still months away from launching, there are already over a dozen rumors about the devices. Below, we have recapped new features and changes expected for the devices so far. These are some of the key changes rumored for the iPhone 16 Pro models as of April 2024:Larger displays: The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max will be equipped with large…
Apple agreed to pay up to $14.4 million (CAD) to settle a class action lawsuit in Canada that alleged the company secretly throttled the performance of some iPhone models (“batterygate”), and eligible customers can now submit a claim for payment. Apple’s settlement received court approval on March 4, and the claims period began today, according to law firm Rochon Genova LLP. To submit a…
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook this week sold 196,410 shares of the company’s stock, which had a total value of approximately $33.2 million based on the average sale price of the transactions, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing. After taxes, Cook netted nearly $16.4 million from the sales. Cook received all of the shares that he sold this week as a performance-based stock…
While rumors have been focused on new iPad Pro and iPad Air models, some Apple customers are wondering when the next iPad mini will be released. In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman said new iPad mini and entry-level iPad models will be released in late 2024 at the earliest. “The company is also working on new versions of the low-end iPad and iPad mini, but those…
This weekend, Best Buy has a sale on MacBooks, including the previous generation 15-inch MacBook Air and the M3 MacBook Pro. As usual, Best Buy’s sale covers far more than just Apple products, and you’ll also find solid discounts on TVs, video games, and more during the event. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a…
Following a few notable discounts on MacBooks yesterday, Best Buy today introduced a sale on the 10th generation iPad, including numerous all-time low prices on the tablet. Prices start at $349.00 for the 64GB Wi-Fi model, and include $100 markdowns on both Wi-Fi and cellular devices. Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with Best Buy. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may…
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Apple design chief Jony Ive have officially teamed up to design an AI-powered personal device and are seeking funding, reports The Information. Little is known about the AI device at this time, but it won’t look like a smartphone. Altman is a major investor in the Humane AI pin, a wearable AI device that does not have a screen, so it’s possible he will create …
Kareem Choudhry has left Microsoft as of Friday, April 5, 2024. The former corporate vice president of Emerging Technologies at Xbox, Choudhry most recently spearheaded the company’s exploration of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in gaming.
As reported by Windows Central, it marks the end of an impressive 26-year tenure at the company. In addition to heading the Emerging Technologies team, Choudhry is also well known for his previous work on many significant Xbox projects. This includes the development of Xbox backwards compatibility and recent advances in Xbox Cloud Gaming.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the rest of the Emerging Technologies team will be incorporated into the wider Xbox hardware division. A memo has reportedly been distributed within the company, describing a desire to accelerate AI innovation through this change.
It comes amid a major strategic shakeup at Xbox, which includes plenty of leadership changes in addition to the recruiting of new staff. As part of this, a newly created Xbox Experiences and Platforms team, led by Ashley McKissick and Kevin Gammill, will now allegedly focus on polishing the Xbox user experience across both PC and console.
Analysis: A digital future for Xbox?
The creation of the new Xbox Experiences and Platforms team makes sense when you consider the recent arrival of a handful of former Xbox-exclusive titles, such as Hi-Fi Rush and Pentiment, on competing platforms including the PlayStation 5 and Nintendo Switch.
With lackluster Xbox Series X sales, it seems increasingly likely that the Xbox brand is heading towards a more software-oriented future. Ensuring a unified Xbox experience across multiple platforms then seems like a considered way to maintain a cohesive brand in the absence of a flagship console, especially with a potential Xbox handheld gaming PC on the horizon.
As for Choudhry’s departure, bringing the company’s AI efforts closer to the main Xbox division could suggest a renewed focus on the technology – potentially as a means to increase the speed of software development. The exact outcomes of this shift have yet to be seen, but it’s certainly worth keeping an eye on Microsoft’s gaming efforts over the coming months.
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Microsoft has made a relatively minor but pretty useful tweak for Copilot in testing, as part of the ongoing effort to bring the AI assistant into play more often with Windows 11.
This is part of the new Windows 11 preview build 22635 deployed in the Beta channel, and the change to Copilot is rolling out gradually, so not all testers in that channel will have it just yet.
The idea is a ‘new experience’ for Copilot that aims to boost your productivity in Windows 11. How exactly? Well, when you copy a text or image file, the AI’s icon in the taskbar has an animation that’s triggered to let you know the assistant can help with that file.
If you hover the mouse over the Copilot icon, you’ll then get some new options – for example with an image file, you’ll be presented with choices including creating an image like the current one, or getting Copilot to analyze the picture.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
Build 22635 doesn’t do an awful lot more than these Copilot tweaks, but there is another change here for Windows Share. Microsoft is making it so you can use this functionality to share directly to a specific Microsoft Teams channel or group chat. (This is an ability that had been in testing previously, but was temporarily removed due to bugs – and it’s now reinstated).
As ever check out Microsoft’s blog post for the build to find out the full details and known issues in this preview release.
Analysis: Treading a fine line
The fresh tweaks for Copilot are simple but quick ways of interacting with files using the AI. Microsoft is putting these various abilities at the fingertips of the user, and highlighting that the AI can help with said animation on the icon. Clearly, the hope is that having brought Copilot to the attention of the person sat at the Windows 11 PC, this will result in more usage of the AI.
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With this change being in the Beta testing channel – the step before Release Preview, where things are finalized for the stable builds of Windows 11 for everyday users – we’ll likely see this introduced with the 24H2 update later this year.
As to the overall concept of having Copilot pointed out actively, if Microsoft is planning to do more along these lines, it’ll have to tread a thin line between helping the user, and perhaps getting on the annoying side with too many little calls for attention.
There’s a fine balance with some aspects of OS development – such as, for example, when recommendations or suggestions in menus become more like adverts – and sometimes Microsoft has strayed beyond the acceptable boundaries, at least in our humble opinion. We’re hopeful this won’t be the case here, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with the current Copilot rejigging in testing.
