2024 the Year Of AI PC: Microsoft Microsoft has taken a giant leap in today's AI driven environment by introducing a dedicated copilot key to the keyboard

This first wave of Copilot+ PCs is the beginning of a new era. Over the past year, the tech world has seen an incredible pace of innovation of AI in the Cloud with Copilot allowing doing things that was never dreamt before. Microsoft at a special event introduced the world to a new category of Windows PCs designed for AI, Copilot+ PCs. "We have completely re imagined the entirety of the PC – from silicon to the operating system, the application layer to the Cloud – with AI at the center, marking the most significant change to the Windows platform in decades," Microsoft stated in a blog.

Earlier this year, the executive vice president, consumer chief marketing officer, Microsoft, Yusuf Mehdi mentioned in a company blog, "2024 the year of the AI PC". Mehdi stated that they are excited to take the next significant step forward and introduce a new Copilot key to Windows 11 PCs. He further added this year Microsoft will be ushering in a significant shift toward a more personal and intelligent computing future where AI will be seamlessly woven into Windows from the system, to the silicon and hardware.

Why should you use it?

Copilot+ PCs are the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built. With powerful new silicon capable of an incredible 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second), all–day battery life and access to the most advanced AI models, Copilot+ PCs will enable users to experience technology at an elevated level. "Easily find and remember what you have seen in your PC with Recall, generate and refine AI images in near real-time directly on the device using Cocreator, and bridge language barriers with Live Captions, translating audio from 40+ languages into English," the blog added.

These experiences come to life on a set of thin, light devices from Microsoft Surface and its OEM partners Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo and Samsung, with pre-orders beginning 20^th May and availability starting on June 18. This will be priced at $999.

Copilot+ PCs are up to 20 times more powerful and up to 100 times as efficient for running AI workloads and deliver industry-leading AI acceleration. "They outperform Apple's MacBook Air 15 by up to 58 per cent in sustained multithreaded performance, all while delivering all-day battery life. With incredible efficiency, Copilot+ PCs can deliver up to 22 hours of local video playback or 15 hours of web browsing on a single charge. That is up to 20 per cent more battery in local video playback than the MacBook Air 15," the blog explained further.

'Key' change in keyboard

The Copilot key is at the left of the directional keys, a position previously occupied by the "Ctrl" key. Microsoft invested an upwards of $10 billion in OpenAI and even briefly hired their CEO, Sam Altman, following his abrupt release from the company. Companies such as Lenovo, Dell and HP have already confirmed the inclusion of the Copilot key in their upcoming laptops and desktops.

It's important to note that Windows users who don't have Copilot activated, or those residing in regions without Copilot access, will find that the new key activates Windows Search. Presently, Windows users can access Copilot by pressing the Windows key + 'C'. Yusuf Medhi said that the new changes will empower people to participate in the AI transformation more easily. He added that the Copilot key joins the Windows key as a core part of the PC keyboard and when pressed, the new key will invoke the Copilot in Windows experience to make it seamless to engage Copilot in any task.

The backstory

The first QWERTY keyboard was introduced in the 1870s by Christopher Latham Sholes and has since been updated by Microsoft in 1994 to add their Windows button. The addition of the AI chatbot by the software giant will be the most significant change to the keyboard in nearly three decades. Since a majority of the world runs on Windows as compared to Apple, this change will impact a larger audience.