Microsoft is unleashing AI on your PC

It's happening next week!  ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ Thanks for reading this special early preview edition of Windows Intelligence, brought to you in partnership with [Thurrott.com](=). This design is merely a placeholder for what's to come. Stay tuned! ​ Hello from New York City! Microsoft had some big announcements yesterday. There were lots of splashy demos of transformative AI features that the company promises will change how you use your PC — starting next week! This all happened days after the surprise departure of Microsoft's head of Windows, a massive leak of confidential plans from inside Microsoft, and big AI announcements from Google, Amazon, and OpenAI. It's been a crazy week. I'll show you what Microsoft announced and demonstrate a variety of Microsoft's AI tools anyone can use today. Chris Today's read: ⌚ 3 Things to Know: 2 minutes ⌚ 3 Things to Try: 2 minutes ⌚ Top Thurrott Thoughts: 30 seconds ⌚ Just for Fun: 30 seconds [] ❱❱ 3 Things to Know This Week 1. Microsoft revealed its AI future this week ➜ THE SHORT VERSION: Microsoft announced "Copilot," a unified vision for its AI features across everything from Windows to Bing and Office. Windows Copilot will start rolling out on Windows 11 in preview form next week. 🔎 KNOW MORE: Copilot is a shiny new friendly brand for the company's AI efforts. Bing Chat will soon be Copilot, too. Your Windows 11 PC is getting a swanky new "Copilot" icon on its taskbar. - Microsoft sees Copilot as the AI assistant for everything in your life, from work to your personal life, removing "drudgery" from your work life and expanding your creative potential outside of work. - The company also showed off Microsoft 365 Copilot for getting work done in Office apps. It's available to all enterprises starting November 1, and a consumer release is coming next year. - Microsoft says "this is just the beginning" and sees AI technology as being as significant as PCs in the '80s, the web in the '90s, or mobile in recent years. 📌 READ MORE: Read [my hands-on look straight from Microsoft's big event](=), which I attended with Paul Thurrott of our partner site [Thurrott.com](=). --------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Microsoft had a week of surprises and leaks ➜ THE SHORT VERSION: There was a lot of Microsoft news leading up to this event: A shock departure of a high-level figure, and an unprecedented leak of documents that gives us insight into Microsoft's plans. 🔎 KNOW MORE: The head of Windows (and devices, including the Surface line of devices) at Microsoft, Panos Panay, is leaving Microsoft. And a massive cache of documents leaked, giving us some clues about the future of Xbox (and more.) - Panos Panay, Microsoft's Chief Product Officer, rose to prominence as the face of Microsoft's Surface group and eventually became responsible for Windows. He's now leaving Microsoft in a surprise move days before a big Windows (and Surface) event. (He's reportedly headed to Amazon to work on Alexa.) - Business Insider reports sources inside Microsoft are saying he left after cuts and canceled products in his unit. Windows Central is saying a variety of future Surface products have been canceled, including new versions of the Surface Duo phone. - Someone at Microsoft accidentally released a big collection of internal documents — mostly focused on Xbox and gaming, but they demonstrate just how much Microsoft is focused on cloud gaming and cloud everything. (Microsoft's head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, says that many of these plans are outdated.) 📌 READ MORE: Read more about [Panos Panay's resignation]() and the chatter about [his reasons for it]( — or take a look at some of these [leaked Xbox plans](. --------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Everyone is hurrying to announce AI features ➜ THE SHORT VERSION: Microsoft isn't the only company talking about AI this week. Google and Amazon both had big AI announcements, and OpenAI took a big step forward with AI image generation. 🔎 KNOW MORE: AI is the exciting new thing in tech, and it seems every company wants to show you — and their investors — that there's an exciting AI future for their technology. - Google announced extensions for Bard that integrate it with Google services. Bard can now connect to a variety of Google tools: Gmail, Docs, Drive, Maps, YouTube, and Flights and Hotels. For example, you can ask Bard to look for things in your Gmail. - Amazon showed off more human-like conversations with Alexa. Microsoft just killed its Cortana voice assistant, so Amazon has an interesting opportunity here. - OpenAI is showing off a big upgrade to its DALL-E image generation software with DALL-E 3. OpenAI is Microsoft's AI partner, and these image generation improvements will likely make it into Microsoft's applications. (Microsoft already uses DALL-E in some places, like for the [Bing Image Creator](. And DALL-E 3 is coming to Bing soon.) 📌 READ MORE: Check out the various announcements straight from [Google](=), [Amazon](=), and [OpenAI](. ​ [] ❱❱ 3 Things to Try This Week 1. Have a conversation with Microsoft's Bing Chat Microsoft's Bing Chat is the big, splashy feature that started it all. Technically, Bing Chat is based on GPT-4 — the machine learning model that underlies the premium version of ChatGPT that you have to pay for. While Bing Chat hasn't totally changed the entire world yet, it's still very interesting. ⌚ Playing with Bing Chat can take as little as 10 seconds. 💻 This works on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, as well as Android, iPhone, and any device with a web browser. ➜ You can ask Bing Chat to do a lot of things, including: - Answer complex questions. - Rewrite (or write) text for you. - Write you a story. - Generate a text-based adventure game on the fly. - Respond to questions based on on image you upload. As always, be sure to fact-check everything! I prefer Bing Chat to Google's Bard because Bing Chat does a much better job of citing the sources where it gets its information from, making fact-checking easier. Bonus: You can ask Bing to generate an image for you, and this feature is going to get a lot more powerful with the integration of OpenAI's new DALL-E 3 real soon. [Bing Chat on the web.] You can also speak directly to Bing Chat using your microphone. On a smartphone, this is pretty convenient — you can ask it a question like it's Google Assistant, Siri, or Cortana (RIP), and it will read back an answer out loud. 📌 To use Bing Chat, head to [bing.com/chat](. (On a smartphone, download the Bing app for Android or iPhone.) --------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Browse the web with an AI assistant in Edge Microsoft is also betting on the future of browsing involving an AI assistant — something Google is experimenting with in Chrome, too. If you use Chrome or another browser, you might not have noticed just how integrated AI has become in Microsoft Edge — and what you can do with it. ⌚ Trying out this feature will take you 10 seconds. 💻 This works on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. ➜ In the Microsoft Edge browser included with Windows, you'll see a Bing icon in a big bubble at the top-right corner of the browser window. While browsing, click it to open Bing Chat. In its sidebar form, Bing Chat can act on the current web page. So you can ask questions about what you're reading. For example, you could ask it to summarize the current page. You could ask it a question based on the contents of the current page and get an answer. If you were reading a recipe, you could perform unit conversions, or ask about substitutions. Edge also has a "Compose" feature that will write emails, blog posts, or other similar things for you — a convenient tool not found in Bing Chat on the web. [Summarizing a page with the Bing Chat sidebar in Microsoft Edge.] Soon, this sort of technology will be integrated directly in Windows and Office, so you'll be able to use it to change Windows settings, ask questions about your files, and write (and rewrite) documents and emails. --------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Generate emails, messages, and more The Bing Chat feature in Microsoft Edge has one more interesting feature that's not found on the web — it's only in Edge's sidebar. That's the "Drafts" pane, a convenient tool that will write emails, paragraphs, blog posts, messages, and whatever else for you. (Technically, it will "draft" them for you — that's a good phrase, as you'll definitely want to double-check what they actually say before using them.) While Microsoft Copilot (for Office apps) is only available to a handful of enterprise users at the moment, this gives you a hint of what it will be like when Outlook can write our emails for you. ⌚ You can get some AI-generated text in just 10 seconds. 💻 This works on both Windows 10 and Windows 11. ➜ In Microsoft Edge, click that Bing icon at the top-right corner of the browser to open the Bing Chat sidebar, and then click "Compose" at the top of the sidebar. Describe what you want to draft (like "An invitation for my Windows 7 launch party"), choose a tone (Professional, Casual, Enthusiastic, Funny, etc.), select a format (Paragraph, Email, Blog post, Ideas list), and pick a length (Short, Medium, or Long). When you're done, click "Generate draft" to get the text you requested. If you click the "+" sign at the bottom, you can add a "suggestion" to change the text. For example, you might ask it to focus more on a particular subject. [The Compose feature in] If you're happy with the text in the preview, click "Add to Site" to insert it into a text box on the current page in Edge. You can also just copy-paste it into another application. As always, be sure to fact-check the text, too. (Case in point: I asked it to generate a summary of the Drafts feature in Microsoft Edge's sidebar, and it made up everything, inventing a fictional drafts feature that helps you save notes with a fake keyboard shortcut that doesn't work.) ​ [] ❱❱ Top Thurrott Thoughts Some standout links and expert analysis from our friends at Thurrott, who have been covering Windows since 1994: - ​[The Next Windows 11 Update (Premium)]()​ - Paul Thurrott and I talked a lot about the messy messaging around Windows updates. - ​[Microsoft’s Chief Product Officer Panos Panay is Leaving Microsoft]() - The leader of Windows resigning right before this week's event was a shock. - ​[Panos (Premium)]()​ - Paul Thurrott looks back at Panos Panay's tenure at Microsoft. - ​[Report: Panay is Headed to Amazon Devices](=) - Here's what he's doing next. - ​[Microsoft’s Xbox Roadmap Leaks: Xbox Series X|S Refresh, New Controller, and More]( - Microsoft leaked a lot of details this week. - ​[Redacted: Achieve Industry Leadership by 2030 (Premium)]( - Paul Thurrott dives into one of the more fascinating leaked documents. - ​[Apple Releases iOS 17, iPadOS 17, and watchOS 10]() - Big news: Apple Maps finally offers offline maps! ​ [] ❱❱ And Just for Fun... Let's take a break from AI for a minute. This bizarre keyboard shortcut has been the talk of the town recently: If you press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Windows+L, Windows will open LinkedIn. But I don't think that's the weirdest one. How's this for weirder? If you press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Windows+Y, that opens Microsoft's Yammer enterprise social networking website. (Except it's not even called Yammer anymore! Now it's called "Viva Engage." But it has a "Y" hotkey anyway.) That is all pretty weird. So let's dive in and explain how this came about. (Hey, this kind of thing is fun and interesting to me!) It's all about something called the "Office Key," a special key Microsoft has added to some of its keyboards over the past few years. The Office key seems to send Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Windows to the operating system. Because of this, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Windows+W opens Word, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Windows+O opens Outlook, and so on. Also, Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Windows opens the main Microsoft 365 application. Microsoft has [a list of Office key shortcuts](. Just press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Windows instead of Office Key to activate them. ​ Wrapping up a big week It's been quite a week for Windows. Microsoft is betting big on AI, and it's not alone. If you're interested in AI, good news: Out of any platform, Windows has the most interesting AI integration going on. I'll definitely be covering it in detail. But don't worry: Windows Intelligence will always be about more than just AI. (Except maybe this particular issue!) And, of course, this newsletter will always be written by a human — not an AI. I can promise you that. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm about to head home for the weekend. See you next week! Thanks for reading Windows Intelligence and being a part of our early preview phase! We'd love to hear what you think so far. ​[Submit your feedback here]() — or just reply to this email. 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