At this year's Build event, Microsoft has announced Team Copilot, and as you can probably guess from its name, it's a variant of the company's AI tool that can cater to the needs of a group of users. It expands Copilot's abilities beyond that of a personal assistant, so that it can serve a whole team, a department or even an entire organization, the company said in its announcement. The new tool was designed to take on time-consuming tasks to free up personnel, such as managing meeting agenda and taking down minutes that group members can tweak as needed. 

The new Copilot for Teams can also serve as a meeting moderator by summarizing important information for latecomers (or for reference after the fact) and answering questions. Finally, it can create and assign tasks in Planner, track their deadlines, and notify team members if they need to contribute to or review a certain task. The company's customers paying for a Copilot license on Microsoft 365 will be able to test these features in preview starting later this year. 

In addition to Team Copilot, Microsoft has also announced new ways customers can personalize the AI assistant. In Copilot Studio, users will be able to make custom Copilots in SharePoint so that users can more quickly access the information they need, as well as to create custom Copilots that act as agents. The latter would allow companies and business owners to automate business processes, such as end-to-end order fulfillment. Finally, the debut of Copilot connectors in Studio will make it easier for developers to build Copilot extensions that can customize the AI tools' actions. 

Adobe is adding another AI-powered tool to its belt with the announcement of Generative Remove for Lightroom. As the name indicates, Generative Remove lets you get rid of any unwanted objects from a photo and then creates "pixel perfect generations" that make it seem as if nothing was ever there. These items could be anything from an ugly trash can in a beautiful photo or a lamp post that blocks an otherwise clear skyline. It's pretty much Adobe's version of Google's Magic Eraser. 

The new tool uses Adobe Firefly, a generative AI creation model launched in March 2023. Firefly trains on licensed content, such as that from Adobe Stock, and can improve image quality, create photos using a description and utilizes Generative Fill and Expand to add, remove or broaden the image. It exists across Adobe products like Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign. 

Generative Remove is currently available as an early access feature for Lightroom, which Adobe claims will make it available to millions of people. Adobe has also expanded Lens Blur, which adds "aesthetic blur effects to parts of a photograph, to be generally available — and with new automatic presets. 

Microsoft couldn’t wait until its Build conference today. It just revealed a bunch of new hardware and plans for Windows. Copilot+ PCs were the big announcement, designed to run generative AI processes locally instead of in the cloud. Of course, Microsoft had new Surface devices to showcase these features, but the usual PC suspects also have new laptops that meet the spec requirements — and include Copilot+ in their name for added chaos. The company also claims Copilot+ PCs are 58 percent faster than the M3-powered MacBook Air.

Engadget

We’ll drill into some other announcements down below.

— Mat Smith

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Microsoft’s redesigned Surface Laptop has over 22 hours of battery life

It’s a Copilot+ PC too.

Engadget

The new Surface Laptop is a redesigned PC with thinner bezels in 13.8- and 15-inch sizes and Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite chip. Microsoft says this is the brightest display it has ever shipped, at 600 nits, and the new Studio Camera is now in the bezel, so no visible notch.

Will the Snapdragon X Elite give better performance? Expect potent battery life. Microsoft claims the 15-inch model will run for up to 22 hours on a single charge while playing videos locally and up to 15 hours while actively browsing the web. We’ve got some hands-on impressions right here, but we’ve got reservations. Devices like the Surface Pro 9, which ran Windows on Arm, still didn’t feel as fast or responsive compared to their more traditional x86-based counterparts.

Continue reading.

Microsoft rebuilt Windows 11 around AI and Arm chips

There’s also a new emulator for running older Windows apps.

Microsoft says it has rebuilt core components of Windows 11 to better support Arm-based hardware and AI. That includes a new kernel, compiler and, most importantly, an emulator named Prism, for running older x86 and x64 apps. Thanks to a powerful new Neural Processing Unit (NPU) in the Snapdragon X Elite chips, Copilot+ PCs can run more than 40 trillion operations per second, a measure of a chip’s AI performance, more than four times the performance of today’s AI PCs.

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With Recall, Microsoft may have fixed Windows’ eternally broken search

The new AI-powered feature is like a photographic memory of everything you’ve done.

This sounds very good. Microsoft also announced Recall, a new feature to make local Windows PC searches as quick and effective as web searches, tapping into AI to add more contextual search parameters. Microsoft product manager Caroline Hernandez gave the example of searching for a blue dress on Pinterest using a Windows PC with Recall. She can search the Recall timeline for ‘blue dress’ (using her voice), which pulls all of her recent searches, saving her from having to sift through browser history. She further refined the query with more specific details like ‘blue pantsuit with sequined lace for Abuelita,’ and Rewind delivered relevant results. Microsoft says it can start with exact information or vague contextual clues to find what you want — and it’s apparently all done locally. It is, however, a Copilot+ exclusive.

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Scarlett Johansson says OpenAI used her likeness without permission

An AI company using something without permission? Whaa?!

AI companies love to tap Scarlett Johansson’s star power, but this time it’s a bigger player in AI. Johansson accused OpenAI of copying her voice for one of the ChatGPT voice assistants, despite her denying the company permission to do so. Johansson’s statement on Monday came hours after OpenAI said it would no longer use the voice. “The voice of Sky is not Scarlett Johansson’s, and it was never intended to resemble hers,” an OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement sent to Engadget. The Her actor said OpenAI only stopped using the voice after she hired legal counsel.

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Microsoft Paint is getting new image generation powers with a new tool called Cocreator. Powered by "diffusion-based algorithms," Cocreator can generate images based on text prompts as well as your own doodles in the Paint app.

The company has been experimenting with AI image generation in Paint for a while, and early versions of Cocreator have been available to developers and Windows Insiders since the fall. But with the introduction of CoPilot+ PCs, the feature is now official.

During a demo at its Surface event, the company showed off how Cocreator combines your own drawings with text prompts to create an image. There’s also a “creativity slider” that allows you to control how much you want AI to take over compared with your original art. As Microsoft pointed out, the combination of text prompts and your own brush strokes enables faster edits. It could also help provide a more precise rendering than what you’d be able to achieve with DALL-E or another text-to-image generator alone.

Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!

What if you could run an entire Windows PC on a mobile Arm-based chip, bringing the power efficiency and thinner designs from smartphones and tablets to laptops? If you've been paying attention to Microsoft's PC strategy over the past two decades, this song probably sounds familiar. From the original Surface in 2012 (running Windows RT for Arm devices) to the recent Surface Pro 9 5G, Microsoft has chipped away at this dream, only to fail miserably every time. Now with its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which includes major upgrades in Windows for Arm systems and AI, Microsoft may finally have the answer to its mobile computing dreams.

Microsoft's portable PC ambitions didn't start with the Surface line: You can trace it back to Windows CE and Windows Mobile-based Pocket PCs. Then there was the short-lived era of netbooks: tiny, cheap and under-powered laptops meant mainly for browsing the web. I'll admit, I loved many a netbook, but they couldn't compete with the rise of the iPhone, Android and tablets.

Timing has never been Microsoft's strongest point. While Apple can just re-orient its platforms around its own homegrown hardware and software to pull off a monumental feat, like the move towards its Arm-based M-series chips, Microsoft has to wait on its many partners. In the case of Copilot+, the program wouldn't have been possible before Qualcomm's new Snapdragon X Elite chips, or before developers were ready to build apps to take advantage of neural processing units (NPUs) for AI work.

"We engineered this update of Windows with the focus on AI and specifically AI inference on those devices, and [with] making sure we were taking full advantage of the Arm 64 instruction set," according to Microsoft’s head of Windows and Surface Pavan Davuluri in a briefing with media earlier this month. "[In] this updated Windows, we built a new compiler in Windows for this exercise. We have a new kernel in the operating system that is built on top of this compiler. We have new schedulers in Windows that are built for taking advantage of these workloads."

Davuluri also noted that there's a new driver compute model that better integrates neural engines into Windows, just like CPUs and GPUs. Those core Windows updates will be a major boon for AI hardware, undoubtedly, but they will also make the OS function far better on Arm chips than we've seen before. Microsoft says that more native Arm apps will be coming to Windows, including Spotify and over 400 apps from other developers. But the key upgrade, a new emulator that's 20 percent faster than its previous solution, and is said to be faster than Apple's Rosetta 2 emulator for M-series Macs.

"We made gains on the breadth and the reach of the emulator," Davuluri said, referring to the amount of apps that Prism works on. "When you combine the new prism emulator with simply the raw performance and improvement in [the Snapdragon X Elite] CPUs themselves, we're in a place where we have great native apps and we're also in a place where the breadth of the app catalog also has tremendous performance, comparable to the rest of the Windows estate today."

While I haven't been able to benchmark Copilot+ PCs yet, I've seen a few compelling demos that point to raw performance and battery life that’s similar to Apple's M3 chip. I'm just hoping the company can finally deliver a Windows on Arm experience that doesn't stink. After reviewing the Surface Pro 9 5G, which was slow and incompatible with many apps, I had given up on the idea of a decent Arm-based Windows PC entirely. But with revamped Surface devices, as well as partners like Dell, ASUS and HP jumping on the Copilot+ bandwagon, maybe Microsoft has finally crafted a decent mobile PC platform.

Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!

Microsoft's Windows on Arm woes may finally be over. As part of the company's new Copilot+ AI PC initiative, which includes new Surfaces and partner systems running Qualcomm's Snapdragon X Elite chips, Microsoft says it has rebuilt core components of Windows 11 to better support Arm-based hardware and AI. That includes a new kernel, compiler, and most importantly, an emulator named "Prism" for running older x86 and x64 apps.

You'd be forgiven for being skeptical, though. Since the launch of Windows RT-powered Surface in 2012, Microsoft has proven it can't be trusted to deliver a decent OS experience on Arm. That device couldn't run legacy x86 apps (who would want to do that in Windows, right?), and it was far slower than PCs with Intel and AMD CPUs. Windows on Arm slowly improved over the years, to the point where it had serviceable emulation on the Surface Pro 9 5G. But that slate still couldn't keep up with its Intel-equipped sibling, especially when it struggled to emulate popular apps like Chrome.

Microsoft says it reworked Windows 11 schedulers to take advantage of Arm capabilities and AI workloads. There's also a new driver compute model that recognizes neural engines more like how Windows sees CPUs and GPUs, as well as AI APIs built directly into the OS. Basically, Arm hardware should no longer feel like an afterthought and developers should be able to tap into AI capabilities more easily.

While Microsoft is pushing the availability of more native Arm apps for Windows 11, it's hard to deny the importance of supporting older software. That's where the Prism emulator comes in. Microsoft claims it's around 20 percent faster than its previous emulator, and it also worked to improve the number of apps that it supports.

Developing...

Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!

At its Build 2024 conference, Microsoft unveiled Rewind, a new feature that tries to turn local Windows PC search as quick and effective as web searches. Similar to third-party apps like Rewind, Microsoft’s Recall uses AI to retrieve virtually anything you’ve seen on your PC. Microsoft describes it as like having a photographic memory.

At Monday’s event, Microsoft Product Manager Caroline Hernandez gave the example of searching for a blue dress on Pinterest using a Windows PC with Recall. Returning later, she can search the Recall timeline for “blue dress” (using her voice), which pulls all of her recent searches, saving her from having to sift through browser history. She then further refined the query with more specific details like “blue pantsuit with sequined lace,” and Rewind brought those up.

Microsoft says Recall uses semantic associations to make connections (like “peacock” relating to blue hues for the dress search).

Developing...

Catch up on all the news from Microsoft's Copilot AI and Surface event today!

Normally, Microsoft’s Build is a straightforward (often dry) showcase of the company’s software and hardware developments, with a dash of on-stage coding to excite the developer crowd. But this year, the company is likely to make some huge AI moves, following its 2023 debut of ChatGPT-powered Bing Chat. Then, there’s new Surface hardware.

In fact, Microsoft has a showcase for new Surfaces and AI in Windows 11 on May 20, while Build actual kicks off a day later. And you know what? The Surface event might be the most impactful.

Rumors suggest we’ll see some of the first systems with Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite chip alongside new features in the next major Windows 11 update.

A refresh for its consumer PCs is likely to consist of new 13- and 15-inch Surface Laptop 6 models with thinner bezels, larger trackpads, improved port selection and that X Elite chip. We might even see an Arm-based version of the Surface Pro 10 too.

While Intel confirmed Microsoft is already working on ways to make Copilot local, we could see that reach consumers as well. By local, I mean the AI assistant could answer simpler questions, like basic math or queries about files on your system, without an internet connection.

— Mat Smith

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Apple may be working on a ‘significantly thinner’ iPhone

iPhone Air?

Engadget

Just like it slimmed down the latest iPad Pro, Apple may try to do the same to the iPhone. To be more precise, the company is working on a “significantly thinner” device that could arrive in 2025, according to The Information. An upgraded front-facing camera could sit alongside Face ID sensors in a smaller pill-shaped cutout, while the rear camera array could move to the center of the phone. The screen size would reportedly be between that of the current base iPhone and the iPhone Pro Max — so between 6.12 and 6.69 inches.

Continue reading.

Slack has been using your chats to train its machine-learning models

You have to email to opt out.

Slack is training its machine learning models on user messages, files and other content, without explicitly asking for permission. This means your private data is being used by default. To opt out, you need your organization’s Slack administrator (IT, HR, etc.) to contact Slack on your behalf.

In response to concerns, Slack recently clarified its data use in a blog post, assuring users that customer data is not used to train generative AI products, which typically rely on external large language models (LLMs). The company uses this data to train machine learning models for features like channel and emoji recommendations and search results. However, it’s misleading, at best, to say customers can opt out when “customers” doesn’t include employees working within an organization. It is also a little misleading, implying all your data is safe from AI training, when the company apparently gets to pick and choose which AI models the statement covers.

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Motorola’s 2024 Razr lineup may include a bigger cover screen for the budget model

The handsets haven’t yet been officially unveiled.

evleaks

Two reliable leaks are showing off the entry-level Moto Razr 50 and high-end Razr 50 Ultra (likely branded as the 2024 Razr and Razr+ in the US), before Motorola even told us about them. The entry-level Razr (2024) will supposedly have a 3.63-inch cover display, quite a step up from the piddly 1.5-inch cover display on the 2023 version I tested. Sadly, no sign of the wood option included in the Edge 50 phone series unveiled last month.

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If you can't tell by now, just about every tech company is eager to pray at the altar of AI, for better or worse. Google's recent I/O developer conference was dominated by AI features, like its seemingly life-like Project Astra assistant. Just before that, OpenAI debuted GPT 4o, a free and conversational AI model that's disturbingly flirty. Next up is Microsoft Build 2024, the company's developer conference that's kicking off next week in Seattle.

Normally, Build is a fairly straightforward celebration of Microsoft's devotion to productivity, with a dash of on-stage coding to excite the developer crowd. But this year, the company is gearing up to make some more huge AI moves, following its debut of the ChatGPT-powered Bing Chat in early 2023. Take that together with rumors around new Surface hardware, and Build 2024 could potentially be one of the most important events Microsoft has ever held.

But prior to Build, Microsoft is hosting a showcase for new Surfaces and AI in Windows 11 on May 20. Build kicks off a day later on May 21. For the average Joe, the Surface event is shaping up to be the more impactful of the two, as rumors suggest we will see some of the first systems featuring Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X Elite chip alongside new features coming in the next major Windows 11 update.

That's not to say it's all rosy for the Windows maker. Build 2024 is the point where we'll see if AI will make or break Microsoft. Will the billions in funding towards OpenAI and Copilot projects actually pay off with useful tools for consumers? Or is the push for AI, and the fabled idea of "artificial general intelligence," inherently foolhardy as it makes computers more opaque and potentially untrustworthy? (How, exactly, do generative AI models come up with their answers? It's not always clear.)

Here are a few things we expect to see at Build 2024:

New Surface hardware

While Microsoft did push out updates to the Surface family earlier this spring, those machines were more meant for enterprise customers, so they aren’t available for purchase in regular retail stores. A Microsoft spokesperson told us at the time that it "absolutely remain[s] committed to consumer devices," and that the commercial focused announcement was "only the first part of this effort."

Instead, the company's upcoming refresh for its consumer PCs is expected to consist of new 13 and 15-inch Surface Laptop 6 models with thinner bezels, larger trackpads, improved port selection and the aforementioned X Elite chip. There’s a good chance that at the May 20th showcase, we’ll also see an Arm-based version of the Surface Pro 10, which will sport a similar design to the business model that came out in March, but with revamped accessories including a Type Cover with a dedicated Copilot key.

According to The Verge, Microsoft is confident that these new systems could outmatch Apple's M3-powered MacBook Air in raw speed and AI performance.

The company has also reportedly revamped emulation for x86 software in its Arm-based version of Windows 11. That's a good thing, since poor emulation was one of the main reasons we hated the Surface Pro 9 5G, a confounding system powered by Microsoft's SQ3 Arm chip. That mobile processor was based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx Gen 3, which was unproven in laptops at the time. Using the Surface Pro 9 5G was so frustrating we felt genuinely offended that Microsoft was selling it as a "Pro" device. So you can be sure we're skeptical about any amazing performance gains from another batch of Qualcomm Arm chips.

It'll also be interesting to see if Microsoft's new consumer devices look any different than their enterprise counterparts, which were basically just chip swaps inside of the cases from the Surface Pro 9 and Laptop 5. If Microsoft is actually betting on mobile chips for its consumer Surfaces, there's room for a complete rethinking of its designs, just like how Apple refashioned its entire laptop lineup around its M-series chips.

AI Explorer

Aside from updated hardware, one of the biggest upgrades on these new Surfaces should be vastly improved on-device AI and machine learning performance thanks to the Snapdragon X Elite chip, which can deliver up to 45 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) from its neural processing unit (NPU). This is key because Microsoft has previously said PCs will need at least 40 TOPs in order to run Windows AI features locally. This leads us to some of the additions coming in the next major build of Microsoft’s OS, including something the company is calling its AI Explorer, expanded Studio effects and more.

According to Windows Central, AI Explorer is going to be Microsoft’s catch-all term covering a range of machine learning-based features. This is expected to include a revamped search tool that lets users look up everything from websites to files using natural language input. There may also be a new timeline that will allow people to scroll back through anything they've done recently on their computer and the addition of contextual suggestions that appear based on whatever they're currently looking at. And building off of some of the Copilot features we’ve seen previously, it seems Microsoft is planning to add support for tools like live captions, expanded Studio effects (including real-time filters) and local generative AI tools that can help create photos and more on the spot.

Smarter and more local Copilots

Microsoft wants an AI Copilot in everything. The company first launched Github Copilot in 2021 as a way to let programmers use AI to deal with mundane coding tasks. At this point, all of the company's other AI tools have also been rebranded as "Microsoft Copilot" (that includes Bing Chat, and Microsoft 365 Copilot for productivity apps). With Copilot Pro, a $20 monthly offering launched earlier this year, the company provides access to the latest GPT models from OpenAI, along with other premium features.

But there's still one downside to all of Microsoft's Copilot tools: They require an internet connection. Very little work is actually happening locally, on your device. That could change soon, though, as Intel confirmed that Microsoft is already working on ways to make Copilot local. That means it may be able to answer simpler questions, like basic math or queries about files on your system, more quickly without hitting the internet at all. As impressive as Microsoft's AI assistant can be, it still typically takes a few seconds to deal with your questions.

More from Microsoft at Build 2024

After all the new hardware and software are announced, Build is positioned to help developers lay even more groundwork to better support those new AI and expanded Copilot features. Microsoft has already teased things like Copilot on Edge and Copilot Plugins for 365 apps, so we’re expecting to hear more on how those will work. And by taking a look at some of the sessions already scheduled for Build, we can see there’s a massive focus on everything AI-related, with breakouts for Customizing Microsoft Copilot, Copilot in Teams, Copilot Extensions and more.

What else to look out for?

While Microsoft will surely draw a lot of attention, it’s important to mention that it won’t be the only manufacturer coming out with new AI PCs. That’s because alongside revamped Surfaces, we’re expecting to see a whole host of other laptops featuring Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X Elite Chip (or possibly the X Plus) from other major vendors like Dell, Lenovo and more.

Admittedly, following the intense focus Google put on AI at I/O 2024, the last thing people may want to hear about is yet more AI. But at this point, like most of its rivals, Microsoft is betting big on machine learning to grow and expand the capabilities of Windows PCs.

The web version of Threads could soon be much more useful. Meta is starting to test custom Tweetdeck-like feeds that will allow users to track multiple topics, searches and accounts in a single view.

People who are part of the test can set “pinned columns” that will track updates around specific topics, tags, accounts or search terms. Users can also opt to have these columns automatically refresh with new content. Based on screenshots shared by Mark Zuckerberg, the new Threads columns look a lot like Tweetdeck, the desktop app long favored by Twitter’s power users. The app is now called X Pro and only available to X’s paid subscribers.

The test is the latest sign Meta is looking to make Threads a more reliable source for real-time information. The company has also added a “recent” tab and trending topics to search. But being able to track multiple feeds of updates at once is even more useful. It could also address long-running complaints about Threads’ algorithmic “for you” feed, which tends to surface a random mix of days-old posts and bizarre personal stories from unconnected accounts.

It’s not clear how many people will be part of Meta’s initial test of the feature, though Adam Mosseri said the company is looking for feedback on the changes. But the company has often rolled out major Threads changes to small group of users first before making them more widely available.