"Your daily AI companion" Copilot is here! Understanding Microsoft's latest heavyweight press conference in one article.

On Thursday, September 21st, Microsoft held a large event in Manhattan, New York, related to updates on the Surface laptop and AI features.

This was Microsoft's first live showcase since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and it was also the first appearance of Yusuf Mehdi, the company's Chief Marketing Officer for Windows and Surface business. Earlier this week, Panos Panay, the former head of Surface, unexpectedly resigned and is rumored to be taking over Amazon's hardware device business.

During the event, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that the company is driving artificial intelligence to become a tool for knowledge workers, business leaders, and developers to enhance productivity and creativity. The rise of AI assistants is as exciting as the emergence of personal computers in the 1980s, the internet in the 1990s, and mobile devices in the 21st century.

The highlight of this event was the introduction of Microsoft's new Copilot platform. Analysts believe that this represents Microsoft's full-scale entry into the field of generative AI, aiming to help users better organize and interact with all their data.

Nadella described Copilot as an experience that spans across the Windows 11 operating system and the Microsoft 365 productivity tool suite, among other interfaces. It will understand users' background information, provide appropriate skills when needed, and adapt to personalized needs:

"We are entering a new era of AI, one that is fundamentally changing the relationship between people and technology and the way we benefit from it. Microsoft's vision is to provide everyday AI companions for individuals and businesses.

We believe that Microsoft Copilot will fundamentally change the relationship between users and technology, ushering in a new era of personal computing: the age of copilots."

Microsoft's stock price initially stopped falling and turned positive in early trading on the US stock market, rising more than 1%. Towards the end of the session, the gains narrowed significantly to near breakeven.

AI Copilot will be rolled out on Windows systems on September 26th, positioning itself as a "daily AI companion."

Microsoft states that Microsoft Copilot is positioned as "your daily AI companion," bringing artificial intelligence into the most commonly used Microsoft products and creating a unified experience. This includes GitHub programming tools, Microsoft 365 productivity and collaboration tools, Bing search engine, Edge browser, and Windows operating system. Personal privacy and data security are also given top priority. Copilot will integrate the online environment, intelligence, user work data, and current PC activities in a unique way to provide better assistance and a simple, seamless AI assistant experience. It will run as an application or pop up when right-clicked. Copilot will be launched in an early form on September 26 as part of the free update to Windows 11.

Firstly, the Windows 11 update will bring more than 150 new features, including the powerful capabilities of Copilot into PC computers. "This is one of our most ambitious updates yet, as Microsoft aims to make the Windows operating system the best AI experience destination." Copilot can be displayed on the taskbar or launched using the Win+C shortcut.

Among them, the Paint drawing function will be enhanced with generative AI for drawing and digital creation, adding background removal, layering, and Cocreator preview features. The Photos feature can quickly highlight the subject of a picture using the "background blur" option. The Snipping Tool can capture specific text content and paste it into other applications, or remove text from a screenshot to protect sensitive information. It can even capture audio for video content creation. The Clipchamp video editor will have an automatic merging function, providing scene suggestions, editing, and narrative creation based on images and materials. Notepad can automatically save previous conversations and more.

The new version of Outlook for Windows can connect to multiple (cloud) accounts from different companies such as Google and Apple. It allows users to write clear and concise emails with the help of intelligent tools and seamlessly attach important documents and photos from Microsoft OneDrive. The more modern File Explorer homepage, address bar, and search box make it easier to access important and relevant content, even without opening files for collaboration. The new Gallery feature provides easy access to photo collections. The Backup function seamlessly transfers most files, applications, and personalized settings from one Windows computer to another.

Other use cases include:

If a user copies a large amount of text in an email, Copilot will automatically pop up on the right side of the desktop to help summarize the key points of the email and search for important information, including providing distances between different locations without the need to copy and paste into a map one by one. Copilot can also be used to solve math problems. Screenshots of charts and equations in PDF format can be solved in the automatically popped-up Copilot.

Copilot can also retrieve content from users' phones (such as text messages). Assuming that a user wants to send a flight schedule to their family, Copilot will import the data onto the computer desktop as requested, and the information can even be sent without taking out the phone.

Bing Search Relies on OpenAI's Latest DALL.E 3 Model to Enhance the Ability to Find Information through Images

Microsoft has also announced new AI features for the Bing search engine and Edge browser, relying on the heavily supported OpenAI company's latest DALL.E 3 large language model. It can provide more personalized answers based on users' search history, new AI-driven shopping experiences, and a more mobile and visual Bing Chat Enterprise intelligent chat function.

For example, chat records can eliminate the need for repetitive searches. Bing will extract earlier conversations with the user to infer what information might be needed, such as informing the user if a football team they searched for is playing in their next travel destination, or suggesting weekend activities suitable for the user to bring their pets along. Users can also choose to disable the tracking of chat records in the Bing settings.

In the shopping experience powered by Copilot (Microsoft Shopping), Bing will ask users for more background details when searching for products, such as skill level for buying soccer shoes or the type of playing field, and then help find suitable products and the best prices based on buyer reviews on the web, combined with coupons and promotional discount codes. In the future, users will be able to directly input photos or saved images to start their shopping journey.

The Bing Image Creator feature will become more powerful with the DALL.E 3 model, providing more beautiful creations and better rendering of details such as fingers and eyes, and better understanding user needs to provide more accurate images. For example, users can directly modify newly generated game avatars in conversation with Bing, and the AI graphic design tool Microsoft Designer is also integrated into Bing.

Microsoft Designer, which aims to quickly create visual effects using cutting-edge AI technology, will also become more powerful with the help of the DALL.E 3 model. It can add backgrounds that originally did not exist or remove unwanted objects, and can easily add original, higher-quality images to users' designs in a matter of seconds, making them more personalized.

Microsoft's General Manager of Search and AI, Divya Kumar, stated during the presentation that people prefer to directly obtain answers to their questions rather than receiving a whole page of web links that they have to sift through:

"More importantly, the DALL-E 3 model will bring significant advancements. Bing Chat will enhance multimodal visual search and the ability to find information and create images using images, and it's free."

Microsoft also mentioned that it will add "Content Credentials," an invisible digital watermark including the original creation time and date, to all AI-generated images in Bing using encryption. Content Credentials support will also be provided by the Paint drawing feature in Windows and Microsoft Designer, ensuring responsible development of generative AI.

Microsoft 365 Copilot Enterprise Edition to be fully launched on November 1st, AI writes emails imitating users' personal style

In addition to the consumer version of Copilot, Microsoft announced that its Microsoft 365 Copilot Enterprise Edition will be fully launched on November 1st, bringing AI to collaborative tools such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams to enhance productivity.

Accompanying the enterprise version is the all-new AI assistant: Microsoft 365 Chat, which can analyze the entire data domain of work, including emails, meetings, chat records, documents, and the entire internet, far beyond simple question-and-answer functionality.

Similar to the consumer-oriented Copilot version, Microsoft 365 Copilot Enterprise Edition will extract users' enterprise data to assist in writing emails, planning activities, and more. Users can ask Copilot to summarize the most popular content in their inbox at the beginning of the workday, receive prioritized emails, and extract and summarize the main content.

Copilot can also extract data from the latest emails, meetings (including those the user did not attend), and other documents to obtain more information about tasks the user is about to perform. Additionally, Copilot can summarize and better organize users' thoughts in Word documents, generate titles or cover images based on the text, and directly incorporate them into the user's creation.

Furthermore, Outlook will introduce a personalized feature called "Sound Like Me," which adds a personal touch by imitating a specific user's writing style in emails. Microsoft also suggests that the more data and background information users provide to Copilot, the better the responses will be. Some technology media present at the press conference said that if AI were to make decisions, it might really replace us.

Microsoft also stated that Microsoft 365 Copilot is offering a preview version to "specific consumers and small business groups".

Microsoft launches two Surface tablets that are the thinnest and most powerful, aiming to be the "best platform for experiencing AI"

As the highlight of the press conference, Microsoft unveiled two Surface laptops: the Surface Laptop Go 3, which is "the lightest Surface device ever" and the Surface Laptop Studio 2, which is "the most powerful laptop ever" in Microsoft's history. The company claims that these new hardware products are the "best platforms for experiencing all the incredible AI features of Microsoft" and both come with the Copilot feature.

Left: Surface Laptop Studio 2, Right: Surface Laptop Go 3

The Surface Laptop Go 3 is equipped with a 12.4-inch touch screen, weighs less than 2.5 pounds, has an 88% faster processing speed than the first-generation Surface Go, and has a battery life of up to 15 hours. It starts at $799 and is available in four colors: green, blue, silver, and a color similar to cyan.

The Surface Laptop Studio 2, targeting higher-end professional creators, features a 14.4-inch foldable touch screen, runs on the 13th generation Intel CPU, Nvidia RTX 4050 or RTX 4060 graphics card, and has a maximum of 64GB of RAM, which is twice the performance of the first-generation Surface Laptop Studio and even more powerful than the MacBook Pro equipped with the M2 Max chip from Apple in certain applications.

The Surface Laptop Studio 2 adds a USB-A port and a microSD card slot, with storage capacity of up to 2TB, making it the Surface laptop with the largest memory capacity. Its new adaptive haptic touchpad is called the "most inclusive touchpad on any laptop" and can be easily used by people with finger disabilities. It starts at $1999, and both models will be available on October 3rd.

According to analysis, the previously rumored 16-inch Surface Laptop Studio model did not appear, and the 2-in-1 computer Surface Go 4 was also absent. However, Microsoft stated in an official statement that the commercial version of Surface Go 4 is its most portable Surface 2-in-1 product, which will be specifically provided to organizations this autumn to meet the growing needs of frontline workers and educators.

In addition, the 3D printable Adaptive Pen Grips for Surface pens have been added to Microsoft's adaptive accessories series, which can be purchased through Shapeways or as a downloadable plan for 3D printing.

Microsoft CFO forecasts the revenue growth from AI in the first half of next year, keeping pace with Google's AI charges

Microsoft summarized, "The new era of artificial intelligence brought by Copilot has arrived," and all of this is concentrated on PC computers such as Surface that are equipped with the latest Windows 11 operating system:

"Microsoft is able to integrate powerful and useful AI experiences into the products that users and businesses use most frequently in a simple, secure, and responsible manner."

Analysts have noticed that Microsoft CFO Amy Hood informed Wall Street analysts two months ago that the financial impact of AI is not explosive but progressive, and it may be mainly reflected in the second half of the 2024 fiscal year ending in June 2024.

In other words, in the first half of the natural year 2024, the revenue growth brought by AI is expected to be reflected in Microsoft's earnings report, providing more indicators for observers to refer to.

At the same time, Microsoft's latest achievements in close collaboration with the San Francisco startup OpenAI were also highlighted at this press conference. The launch of more artificial intelligence tools will continue to expand Microsoft's already leading position in the market.

Previously, Microsoft stated that the additional AI features are priced at an extra $30 per person per month on top of the existing subscription fees for Microsoft 365. This is the same as Google's charging strategy, which is also committed to using generative AI to enhance work efficiency. Last month, Google Workspace started charging enterprise users $30 per person per month for the Duet AI feature.