Microsoft Unveils Copilot+ PCs with AI Inside

Rich DeMuro
·2 min read

At an exclusive event on their newly refreshed Redmond Campus, Microsoft unveiled a new category of computers called Copilot+ PCs.

These are computers with AI front and center.

Copilot+ PCs have minimum specifications, including at least 16 gigabytes of RAM and 256 gigabytes of storage. They must also have a dedicated AI chip inside called an NPU, and it has to have at least 40 TOPs of performance or 40 trillion options per second.

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Microsoft showed off its first two new computers to have the distinction: Surface Laptop and Surface Pro.

Remember the whole Intel Inside marketing campaign? Notably, it’s not Intel Inside but Qualcomm Snapdragon chips, which promise better performance and Surface’s best battery life yet.

“What we needed for these new laptops was a brand new processor. It needed to be more powerful, have a CPU, GPU, and what we call a neural processing unit, an input running at over 40 trillion operations per second,” said Matt Barlow, who runs Surface marketing at Microsoft.

Other PC makers will also produce computers with the new designation. Best Buy will dedicate an entire section of its store to the new category.

Microsoft also showed several new AI features, including Recall, which remembers everything you do on your computer, so you can use even the most obscure keywords to find any file, image, or website you visited.

“We can run this AI locally on the device. This information is yours, and we’ve got built-in privacy controls, so you can always pause your content and delete your snapshots,” explained Nicci Trovinger with Microsoft.

Other new AI features include Live Captions, which can translate audio and even video chats in real-time and seamlessly switch between 40 languages.

A Paint feature called co-creator uses your sketches to inspire AI-generated images.

“One of the things that Microsoft was very clear about here is that this is going to help you do your job, it’s going to make you more productive, it’s going to let you have a little bit more fun, and it’s going to do so without slowing down your computer or killing your battery life,” said Techsponential analyst Avi Greengart.

Microsoft directly compared its new Surface PCs to Apple’s MacBook Air. It’s clear that Microsoft wants to either stop people from switching or get some to switch back.

Microsoft’s new Surface computers start at $999 and are available for pre-order now. They ship on June 18th.

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