Before Microsoft’s Build 2024 developer conference kicked off today, the company made a number of initial announcements during a special hour-long keynote event on May 20th hosted at its Redmond campus in Washington. These announcements included:
TechRepublic takes a closer look at all the major announcements made at the Surface and Copilot AI event on May 20, 2024.
The first major announcement to come from the keynote was the launch of Microsoft’s new category of personal computers: Copilot+ PCs. These PCs come with the Copilot AI built in as well as Snapdragon X Elite and Plus processors from Qualcomm capable of 40 trillion operations per second.
SEE: Microsoft Copilot Cheat Sheet: Price, Versions & Benefits
The PCs also have neural processing units designed to power new AI features in the Windows 11 operating system. For example, a Copilot+ PC will be able to make suggestions in Settings, write responses to notifications and edit files in File Explorer.
Another new feature is the Prism translation layer, which will allow software written for Intel and AMD chips to work just as well on chips made with Arm technology. This is the Microsoft equivalent of Apple’s Rosetta 2, and the company said it performs comparatively well.
Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of consumer marketing, said the Copilot+ devices are 58% faster than the MacBook Air with its M3 chip. The devices will be sold directly by Microsoft but also by other manufacturers, including Dell, Lenovo, Acer, HP and Asus.
Mehdi added that faster AI assistants that run directly on the device will be “the most compelling reason to upgrade your PC in a long time.”
“I’m excited to share that GPT-4o, with voice and vision capabilities, will soon be available on Copilot,” Mehdi said at the event.
OpenAI’s new model will be able to answer questions based on what is being displayed on screen. An example was shown of how the AI could walk a user through playing the sandbox video game Minecraft.
SEE: OpenAI’s Next Flagship Model Is the ‘Natively Multimodal’ GPT-4o
Recall is a new AI-powered feature that will allow Copilot+ PC owners to quickly and intuitively search through their device’s history. It runs locally, logging everything the computer has done, including web browsing, file creation and voice chats, so anything the user has come across via that PC can be called upon. Recall is incorporated with Timeline — the existing Windows feature that shows running apps and past activities — to give an easy-to-use scrollable interface.
Examples were given at the keynote of rediscovering months-old PowerPoint slides, clothes you were looking at online and conversations gone by on apps like Discord by using Recall. When it comes to security, Recall data will only be stored on the device and will not be used to train Microsoft’s AI models; users can control which data is seen and stored.
The first of new Copilot+ PCs is the Surface Pro 11. Its Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips, based on Arm architecture and replacing the previous iteration’s Intel Core Ultra processor, make it up to 90% faster.
Many of the apps on the Surface Pro 11, including Microsoft 365, Chrome, Spotify, Zoom and WhatsApp, run natively on ARM64 processors for improved performance. It is also compatible with a new Surface Pro Flex Keyboard, which works attached or detached. The keyboard and touchpad have been designed to be more accessibility friendly, and there is a Surface Slim Pen holder for storage and charging.
When it comes to its external features, the Surface Pro 11 has a 13-inch screen and is available in blue, beige, black and platinum. The tablet has a QHD front-facing camera and a 10 MP rear camera that can capture 4K video. It is also the first Surface device to offer an OLED display option with HDR support. The new Surface Pro launches on June 18 but is available to pre-order now, starting at $999.99.
The other new Copilot+ PC device launched at Monday’s event is the Surface Laptop 7, which also runs on Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips to support the new AI features. It is more than 80% faster than the previous Surface Laptop and has almost double the battery life, with 22 hours of on-device video playback and 15 hours of web browsing.
A live demonstration took place of the Surface Laptop 7 processing images with Adobe Photoshop at the same time as an Apple MacBook Air, and the former was about twice as fast. The new laptop has also been given a new look with thinner bezels; colour options of blue, beige, black, and platinum; and either a 13.8 inch or 15-inch display. It is available to pre-order now, starting at $999.99, but won’t ship until June 18.
Microsoft made a number of announcements that increased the creative capabilities of its product lineup. These were:
You can watch the full keynote of the Surface and Copilot AI event on the Microsoft YouTube channel.
