Hyper Racing | AI PC: Microsoft is here!

In response to multiple inquiries about how Apple will utilize AI technology, Tim Cook is accustomed to teasing and keeping the suspense, but as the market develops rapidly, Microsoft, which has a long-standing feud with Apple, has once again unveiled the tangible results of AI technology.

This time, Microsoft has launched its self-developed "Copilot+PC," expanding the boundaries of AI applications on PCs. Microsoft refers to it as a new species of AI PC; among them, Copilot is equipped with OpenAI's latest multimodal model, GPT-4o.

What's even more terrifying is that this is just one of the 50+ AI capabilities and hardware devices announced by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at the 2024 Microsoft Build conference, with other key achievements including the self-developed Cobalt chip, Phi-Silica for NPU-related edge-side small models, and SOTA small models designed for "Copilot+PC."

Compared to Apple's slow actions in utilizing AI technology, Microsoft can be described as the Flash, both in terms of speed and achievements.

In the early hours of May 22nd, Beijing time, Microsoft unveiled more than 50 AI PC software and hardware development tools and products at the 2024 Microsoft Build conference.

Nadella mentioned Microsoft's efforts in AI PC over the past year, focusing on how to empower developers to change the world using large model capabilities.

To this end, Microsoft has built a three-tier technical and application framework: the user's daily assistant is "Microsoft Copilot"; the capabilities supporting this "AI assistant" come from the Copilot stack, allowing developers to quickly build AI solutions and implement AI applications; thirdly, the intelligent terminal that carries these two capabilities - the "Copilot+PC" AI PC.

The first "Copilot+PC" is the new Surface Pro equipped with a Qualcomm Arm architecture processor. Speaking of which, the industrial goals of Qualcomm's Arm architecture CPU are worth a separate discussion.

The so-called "Copilot+PC" is not actually a physical combination of "Copilot" and PC, but rather the meaning of "Copilot+" - that is, a PC with the software capabilities of Copilot.

Setting aside the complex software technology and returning to the application itself, the most dreamy and stunning application introduced by Microsoft this time with "Copilot+PC" (specifically referring to laptops, not desktop PCs) is "Recall," meaning that anything the user has done with Microsoft's AI laptop can be found using the "Recall" function.

For example, Copilot has the ability to find a pair of tempting shoes that the user saw on a browser a few days ago. Through natural language, users can describe relevant information about those shoes to Copilot, such as color, style, material, price, etc., and the Microsoft AI PC can directly bring the user back to the moment when those shoes appeared on the screenDoesn't it feel a bit like "turning back time"?

If you think that's all, then you're underestimating Microsoft. Can't wait? Don't worry, there's more!

"Recall" also has a timeline that allows users to drag back and forth to find the exact time point they need. Users can also directly delete the content recorded by AI and specify application settings to block the Recall function from the whitelist, all of which are processed on the client side, not on the cloud.

The essence of this application actually heralds Microsoft's proactive application judgment for AI PCs. What does this mean exactly? Stay tuned for Microsoft's future launch of PC-side AI applications.

From a software and hardware perspective, Microsoft's AI PC is equipped with Microsoft's self-developed AI GPU "Cobalt" (hardware), supporting cross-system AI applications (software) that users can access in browsers, system settings, notifications, and various system applications. For example, on a Microsoft AI PC, all audio and video being played can be translated in real-time into over 40 languages.

The core capability here is that "Copilot has context-awareness and visual perception capabilities, helping users with any tasks on the PC screen."

As for analyzing local computer files, tables, and data to summarize them into documents or draw pictures, Copilot can easily handle these tasks.

Thinking about some AI edge applications currently available or popular in the industry, Microsoft's "Copilot+" can achieve them all.

At the event, Microsoft announced that the first Copilot+PC—the latest Surface series—will be launched on June 18th: the CPU will use the Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite and Snapdragon X Plus (Arm architecture), with versions using Intel and AMD chips to be released at a later date.

According to official Microsoft test data, the new Surface Pro has a 58% higher multi-threaded performance than the Apple MacBook Air 15 and can support 22 hours of local video playback, including an OLED screen version.

One thing worth noting: previously, Microsoft (including Qualcomm) has been promoting the development of Arm-based Windows PC ecosystems, but the performance has not met expectations. This time, the AI PC laptops empowered by "Copilot" are expected to accelerate the construction of the Arm-based PC ecosystem.

If this turns out to be true, it won't just shake Apple, but also Intel. As a core member of the most valuable and longest-lasting technology collaboration "Wintel" alliance in the industry, Microsoft is actually digging a grave for it. Why is that? Could it be that Intel's demands are too high, even for Microsoft?

Even if Intel faces potential impacts in the future, the real threat faced by Microsoft is actually Apple.

The capital markets can roughly observe the speed and results of Apple and Microsoft's moves in AI technology from the changes in their stock pricesOpenAI is set to launch the groundbreaking ChatGPT-3.5 in November 30, 2022. From that day until May 22 this year, Apple and Microsoft's stock prices have increased by 30.23% and 71.62% respectively, with the latter being more than 200% of the former. Apple's market capitalization is $2.9 trillion, while Microsoft's is $3.2 trillion.

Now, all we hope for is that Tim Cook can unveil a sufficiently attractive edge AI technology solution at WWDC24 (Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference) on June 10.

Otherwise, Apple's crown will truly be at risk