Microsoft
Microsoft pushed all through 2023 to add generative AI capabilities to its software program, even extending its new Copilot AI assistant to Windows 10 late final 12 months. Now, these efforts to remodel PCs at a software program stage is extending to the {hardware}: Microsoft is adding a devoted Copilot key to PC keyboards, adjusting the normal Windows keyboard format for the first time since the Windows key first appeared on its Natural Keyboard in 1994.
The Copilot key will, predictably, open up the Copilot generative AI assistant inside Windows 10 and Windows 11. On an up-to-date Windows PC with Copilot enabled, you’ll be able to at the moment do the identical factor by urgent Windows + C. For PCs with out Copilot enabled, together with people who aren’t signed into Microsoft accounts, the Copilot key will open Windows Search as an alternative (although this is kind of redundant, since urgent the Windows key after which typing straight into the Start menu additionally prompts the Search perform).
A fast Microsoft demo video reveals the Copilot key in between the cluster of arrow keys and the proper Alt button, a place the place many keyboards normally put a menu button, a proper Ctrl key, one other Windows key, or one thing related. The precise positioning, and the key being changed, could range relying on the dimension and format of the keyboard.
We requested Microsoft if a Copilot key could be required on OEM PCs going ahead; the firm informed us that the key is not necessary now, however that it expects Copilot keys to be required on Windows 11 keyboards “over time.” Microsoft typically imposes some extra {hardware} necessities on main PC makers that promote Windows on their units, past what is strictly needed to run Windows itself.
If nothing else, this new key is a signal of how a lot Microsoft desires folks to use Copilot and its different generative AI merchandise. Plenty of previous firm initiatives—Bing, Edge, Cortana, and the Microsoft Store, to title a few—by no means managed to change into baked into the {hardware} like this. In the Windows 8 epoch, Microsoft required OEMs to construct a Windows button into the show bezel of units with touchscreens, however that requirement finally disappeared. If Copilot fizzles or is deemphasized the means Cortana was, the Copilot key may change into a means to shortly date a Windows PC from the mid-2020s, the means that modifications to the Windows brand date keyboards from earlier eras.
We’ll positively see extra AI options from Microsoft this 12 months, too—Microsoft Chief Marketing Officer Yusuf Medhi referred to as 2024 “the 12 months of the AI PC” in in the present day’s announcement.
Chipmakers like Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm are all constructing neural processing models (NPUs) into their newest silicon, and we’ll seemingly see extra updates for Windows apps and options that may benefit from this new on-device processing functionality. Rumors additionally point out that we may see a “Windows 12” launch as quickly as this 12 months; whereas Windows 11 has largely had AI options stacked on high of it, a new OS may launch with AI options extra deeply built-in into the UI and apps, in addition to extra {hardware} necessities for some options.
Microsoft says the Copilot key will debut in some PCs that shall be introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show this month. Surface units with the revised keyboard format are “upcoming.”