Microsoft’s Copilot and the Latest Surface Editions

Over the past eight months, there’s been a significant buzz in the tech world, particularly around artificial intelligence. One of the most notable discussions came from Satay, who commenced a dialogue about the recent innovations, focusing on OpenAI’s Chat GPT.

Satay began by giving homage to Douglas Engelbart with the thought-provoking quote, “These two factors, complexity and urgency, are the measure for human organization and institutions. The complexity/urgency factor had transcended what humans can cope with. I suddenly flashed that if you could do something to improve human capability to cope with that, then you’d really contribute something basic.” This thought resonates with the essential role of AI in enhancing human capability.

AI, according to Satay, offers a pivotal shift in our capabilities, empowering individuals to achieve more than they could alone. He presented a compelling visual that demonstrated how a Natural User Interface, when combined with a reasoning engine, creates a transformative computing experience. To put this in perspective, Satay paralleled the significance of this advancement to the personal computers of the ’80s, the rise of the web in the ’90s, mobile innovations in the 2000s, and the cloud revolution of the 2010s. His prediction? An AI copilot will become an integral part of every task we undertake.

Microsoft has named this AI tooling “Copilot.” Set to redefine user experience, Copilot will seamlessly integrate into products and services like Microsoft Office, Bing, and even Windows. From Edge to Office 365 and the Windows 11 desktop, Copilot will be ubiquitous. Mark your calendars for September 26th; this is when Copilot will be available in Windows 11, changing the way users interact with AI.

Brief summary of the announcements that were made:

• Bing image creator is now powered by the revolutionary Dall-E 3, enabling users to use text to create captivating images.
• The Bing Chat Enterprise is becoming available and it key feature is that it keeps your data and prompts private.  Which has been a major crux of using Chat GPT to date.
• Microsoft 365 Copilot, to be released on November 1, will act as your AI work assistant, facilitating tasks like inbox management, referencing, and summarizing.
• Tools like Outlook’s “sound like me” will offer a more personalized email experience, making your correspondence sound distinctly like you.
• Copilot Lab will serve as a space for users to experiment, learn and harness the power of prompts to make the most of the Copilot experience.
• Microsoft Designer will be an integrated feature in Bing, introducing mutiple capabilities in photo editing and document design.

But that’s not all. Microsoft has also unveiled the Surface Laptop Studio 2. This powerhouse will boast a 13th Gen Intel Core i7 H-Class processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX GPU options, an 84 FPS rate, and the groundbreaking Intel NPU. Setting a benchmark in AI capabilities. I only mention it because it is a laptop geared towards AI performance. This might be a new trend in hardware.

If you want more details I suggest watching the entire presentation at Announcing Microsoft Copilot, your everyday AI companion.  It is about an hour long but shows off some cool capabilities that are coming.