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The day before the start of Microsoft's annual Build conference, the tech giant is holding a major news conference and TechRadar is on the ground in Washington to bring you the latest news as it breaks.
There's been almost no hint of what is being prepped for announcement, so I'll be hearing the news for the first time myself right along with you, and while the event will not be live-streamed, I'll make sure to keep you posted on everything that Microsoft announces as I hear it.
The big guess ahead of Build has been that Microsoft's heavy focus on AI will lean into the slew of new processors hitting the market from Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm, with the latter's Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus chips giving a lot of people hope that Windows on Arm could finally be getting a real shot in the, well, arm. I couldn't help that one, sorry.
But it's also likely that, since this is a developer conference, we're going to see a lot of chatter about Microsoft Copilot. This might include new tools and features, deeper ChatGPT integration, and more along those lines.
Of course, the real wildcard would be Windows 12, but I highly doubt that we're there yet, but we'll see soon enough.
Here we go, folks! This is John, live from Microsoft's Redmond campus in Washington state, where the venerable tech giant is holding a special event ahead of its annual Microsoft Build conference. We're all expecting some exciting stuff from the event, so stay tuned as I bring you everything I see and hear over the next hour.
We're underway now as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella takes the stage. I can tell you right now, given the number of Qualcomm folks I've seen around here and how the Copilot logo is plastered all over the campus, it's not really a mystery that this event is going to be heavily weighted towards Microsoft's gargantuan AI ambitions and that Qualcomm's Snapdragon X chips are going to play a pretty big role in Microsoft's Surface device plans.
We're starting with Copilot.
Copilot + PC is the new platform Microsoft is introducing, though we don't know a whole lot yet. This is absolutely about integrating AI into the entire Windows platform, not just a tool slapped like a barnacle on the side of a non-AI operating system.
Yusuf Medhi is taking the stage to tell us about the new category of PC platform.
We're talking about a new system architecture running at 40+ trillion operations per second, 58% faster than the MacBook Air with M3, according to Mehdi.
Copilot is going to be integrated into Windows 11 Settings, Notifications, and other systems.
OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o is going to be fully integrated into Windows, letting ChatGPT-4o help you navigate Minecraft if you've never played the game, kind of like an interactive walkthrough.
As far as demos go, the ChatGPT-4o walkthrough of how to play Minecraft is pretty impressive. As a lifelong gamer, its the kind of use case that makes sense for real people.
We're onto Recall now, which promises to leverage your use history with on-device AI to allow you to pull data you didn't even know you forgot had been processed on your PC. Carolina Hernandez, the product lead for Recall, is describing how to use the Recall function to search for webpages you once visited using natural language, such as the blue dress that you were looking at as a present for a family member.
We're onto privacy and safety. Recall data will only be used on device, with control over what data is retained on your device, and it will never be used to train Microsoft's AI models.
Windows Recall also incorporates Timeline, which lets you scroll through your device history to find what you're looking for.
The idea of having a 'history' for your PC, much like a web browser, that lets you backtrack through offline work is genuinely innovative. If it's on device and secure, I'm absolutely on board with this kind of AI.
We're now onto Windows Copilot Runtime, an OS-level framework that will allow developers to better utilize the power of an NPU for their apps.
OK, we're now talking about the partnerships between Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm. The video is featuring Gelsinger, Su, and Amon, like an Avengers superteam. I guess Apple is Thanos in this case?
We're now onto native Arm apps, including Microsoft 365 apps completely rebuilt from the ground up for ARM.
OK, Prism emulation for Windows on Arm, effectively bridging the x86/x64/Arm gap.
New Microsoft Surface Laptop and Surface Pro with Copilot and Snapdragon X chips. Up to 22 hours of on device video playback, 15 hours of web browsing battery life.
Adobe Creative Suite will now run native on Copilot + PC devices, which require 16GB of RAM, 256GB SSD storage, and an integrated NPU.
In a live demonstration of Adobe Photoshop running on the new Surface Laptop, it processed multiple images about twice as fast on the Surface Laptop as it was on the Apple MacBook Air with M3.
OK, so Live Captions will use the NPU to provide live translations of any audio as it plays, with a video demo showing a global team on a Teams call all speaking different languages, but the captions stayed consistent across three different languages, with 40 languages supported to start.
The new Surface Pro is up to 90% faster than the Surface Pro 9.
The Surface Pro features a QHD front facing camera, with a rear camera that can capture 4K video.
The keyboard and touchpad will feature more accessibility-friendly touchpad and keys, again, showing Microsoft's leadership on accessibility tech across their product lines.
We're now onto generative AI. Cocreator, a text-to-image tool, will take text and brushstroke input collaboratively. It can also let you iterate on your own sketching, which is going to be a powerful tool for artists who are brainstorming designs.