Copilot+ PC? More like Copilot- PC
Copilot+ PCs. They’d have you believe that these “next-generation AI laptops” are packed with AI smarts and useful features.
But, while the hardware for AI tasks is ready in these laptops, the actual features built into Windows aren’t making full use of it.
We’re in a weird position. We’re excited about these laptops because they’re the first seriously impressive Windows on Arm laptops. We’re excited about long battery life with snappy performance. And we’re excited that next-generation Intel Lunar Lake hardware is looking like a huge leap for traditional x86 laptops.
But we’re not excited about all these at-launch AI features being pushed by marketing campaigns. Snapdragon X Elite-powered PCs might be intriguing, but if you’re excited about an immediate AI upgrade to your Windows experience, you’re going to be disappointed. Here’s why.
Further reading: Microsoft Surface Pro 7 review: A new long-lasting, Qualcomm-powered era for Windows laptops
AI image generation needs a Microsoft account and internet connection
A Copilot+ PC has some extra AI image generation tools integrated into various apps throughout Windows:
- Paint has a Cocreator tool that can generate an image as you draw, modifying it to fit your drawing.
- Photos has a Restyle tool that will let you use generative AI as a “filter” for your image. For example, taking a photo and making it look like it was a watercolor painting.
- Photos also has an Image Generator feature that generates images to match your text prompts.
Here’s the thing: While these tools all use the NPU inside a Copilot+ PC, none of them work offline. They require a Microsoft account and an active internet connection to work. Why? To check your images for “AI safety” before showing them to you.
Live Captions gains some tricks, but already runs on all Windows 11 PCs
On any Windows 11 PC, you can open the Live Captions app from your Start menu to get AI-powered captions for speech. It uses Microsoft’s cloud servers to generate live captions in real time from any audio—audio in a video file, audio in an online meeting, or even audio being picked up by your PC’s microphone.
On a Copilot+ PC, Live Captions gets a little more powerful: it can now work entirely offline (unlike Microsoft’s AI image generation tools) and it can now translate speech from 44 different languages to English.
Windows Studio Effects are fine, but not much is new
Microsoft has been talking up Windows Studio Effects as one of the big AI features for Copilot+ PCs. These are real-time webcam effects that use the computer’s NPU to change how your webcam looks in any app.
I like them, really. You can enable fake eye contact or blur your background in any app, for example. And, because it uses the NPU, it’s a power-efficient way to do webcam effects. You won’t be wasting CPU or GPU power in an online meeting.
However, this isn’t exactly new. Windows Studio Effects is the one AI feature that functioned out of the box on first-generation “AI laptops” with Intel Meteor Lake hardware. You don’t need a Copilot+ PC for them.
Recall would have been the big feature
Recall will take screenshots of your PC’s display every five seconds, create a big database of your PC activity, and then let you search through it with plain language queries—just like when you talk to an AI chatbot.
Unlike the Copilot AI chatbot or AI image generation features, it will work entirely offline. That’s what Microsoft said when it announced Recall.
It’s clear why Microsoft made such a big deal about Windows Recall when it announced Copilot+ PCs. Without Recall, there’s a distinct lack of a centerpiece AI feature that really sells these PCs. Instead, it’s just a collection of little tech demos that shows off what the NPU can do.
With Copilot+, you’re buying into a promise
I’m calling these features “tech demos” for a reason. They feel like they exist to demonstrate the power of the neural processing unit and the Windows Copilot Runtime that Microsoft is offering to developers.
The vision of a Copilot+ PC isn’t that Windows will totally transform itself. The vision is that third-party application developers will leverage this hardware to add AI features into their own applications.
It’s early days, for sure. If you’re excited about a Copilot+ PC because of the AI features, I recommend you slow down before buying one because you may be disappointed, especially without Recall.
I always recommend buying hardware for what it can do today, not based on what it might do in the future. (Already this year, buyers of first-generation AI PCs got burned for buying into a vision too early.)
But if you’re mainly excited about the battery life and performance promises of Copilot+ PCs? That may be a good reason to buy one! I’ve been very impressed with the battery life and snappy performance so far. I wish Microsoft and Qualcomm were talking more about that than AI with this debut Snapdragon X Elite laptops.
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Author: Chris Hoffman, Contributor
Chris Hoffman is the author of Windows Intelligence, a free email newsletter that brings the latest Windows PC news, trips, and tricks to inboxes each week. He’s also the former editor-in-chief of How-To Geek and a veteran tech journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, PCMag, Reader’s Digest, and other publications.
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