During a keynote event before its Build 2024 conference, Microsoft announced Copilot+ PCs, Surface Pro 11, Surface Laptop 7 and more.
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:
Copilot+ PCs.
Copilot and GPT-4o.
Recall.
Surface Pro 11.
Surface Laptop 7.
AI-optimized creative apps.
TechRepublic takes a closer look at all the major announcements made at the Surface and Copilot AI event on May 20, 2024.Copilot+ PCs
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.
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.”Copilot and GPT-4o
“I’m excited to share that GPT-4o, with voice and vision capabilities, will soon be available on Copilot,” Mehdi said at the event.
