Copilot Takes Center Stage in Windows 11 and Windows 365

Microsoft is putting Copilot, the company's AI assistant, front-and-center in Windows 11 hoping to incentivize business customers to upgrade from older versions, the software giant said in an online event on Thursday. Microsoft is doing so by increasing Copilot integrations in Microsoft 365, its suite of work apps and cloud-based services. A duo of business-focused Microsoft Surface devices were unveiled as well, both of which will take advantage of Copilot's AI capabilities.

In Microsoft 365, users can now click "Work" to enable Copilot, synthesizing data across a person's emails, meetings chats, documents and more, as well as the web. 

With the release of ChatGPT in late 2022, Microsoft quickly doubled down on AI. Microsoft increased its investment into OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT, and integrated its tech into Bing. Late last year, Microsoft unveiled Copilot, its AI assistant, and began integrating it into Windows 11, allowing people to summarize Word documents or draft emails. The company touted it as an AI assistant. And at Microsoft Ignite last year, the company unveiled its development of custom AI chips and other Azure AI features. Microsoft's shift towards AI, as well as its continued dominance in the workplace cloud and software markets, have helped propel it into becoming a $3 trillion company in market valuation earlier this year, the second company ever to do so, after Apple. 

With the new Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6, Microsoft touted business features like integrated NFC readers and added ports. And in Windows 365, Microsoft's cloud-based virtual machines that allow people to pull up a Windows environment from any screen, the company now allows for single sign-on, a one-and-done sign-on solution to access multiple apps and systems, as well as passwordless authentication. Security measures include watermarking, screen capture protection and tamper protection. Windows 365 is also getting a new feature called Windows 365 GPU, which allows developers to offload graphic design, 3D modeling or video rendering workloads to powerful GPU-enabled cloud PCs. 

In the next release of Windows 11 preview, which will go live at the end of the month, new accessibility-focused Copilot skills will be enabled, including narration, launch screen magnifier, changes to text size and live captions. Voice shortcuts will also allow people to create custom commands, such as to paste text or media, pressing certain keyboard keys, opening folders, files, apps or URLs.