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[Jinzo Prime]

Introducing a new Copilot key to kick off the year of AI-powered Windows PCs

Today, we are excited to take the next significant step forward and introduce a new Copilot key to Windows 11 PCs. In this new year, we will be ushering in a significant shift toward a more personal and intelligent computing future where AI will be s

blogs.windows.com

Clippit, Cortana, Copilot, third time's the charm!

 

[YCoCg]

Adobe: "We're adding AI to monitor and help you"
Audacity: "We're adding AI to monitor and help you"
Windows: "We're adding AI to monitor and help you"

Call me cynical but it feels like AI is being used as an excuse to add more tracking software to our devices, why do most things suddenly need an AI?

 

[kruis]

MS is so hellbent on pushing its own AI services it will force PC manufacturers to put a CoPilot label on every PC keyboard. Because god forbid some Windows user out there might perhaps use an AI service from its competitors in 2024.

Microsoft is adding a new key to PC keyboards for the first time since 1994

Copilot key will eventually be required in new PC keyboards, though not yet.

arstechnica.com

We asked Microsoft if a Copilot key would be required on OEM PCs going forward; the company told us that the key isn't mandatory now, but that it expects Copilot keys to be required on Windows 11 keyboards "over time." Microsoft often imposes some additional hardware requirements on major PC makers that sell Windows on their devices, beyond what is strictly necessary to run Windows itself.

BTW This is not the first time MS tried to use special keys to push their products. A couple of years ago there was a failed attempt to make dedicated Office and Emoji keys a thing.

Microsoft has dedicated Office and emoji keys on its new keyboards

These new keyboards launch later this month

www.theverge.com

 

[Nitty_Grimes]

I’d tell them to fuck off to be fair.

 

[MrTroubleMaker]

 

[Soodanim]

It's become standard procedure to run disabling software on any installation of Windows, and if they are insisting on the new key then I'll be making it standard procedure to turn that key back into something else.

 

[Majima Everywhere System]

Just seems like it could put some users on Edge.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

Microsoft doesn't even enable Copilot on Windows installations which don't use a Microsoft account. If you use a Local account, you aren't even allowed to have it. I wonder what that keyboard key will do then? Probably nothing LOL

Honestly fuck Microsoft, I would love to switch permanently to Mac but I have to put up with Windows to be a PC gamer

Also if the goal of bundling Copilot with Windows is to reduce the use of competitor AI techs (which it is), we can expect an antitrust investigation of this, it's no different from bundling Internet Explorer with Windows back in the day which led to one of the world's most infamous antitrust trials

 

[Soodanim]

Honestly fuck Microsoft, I would love to switch permanently to Mac but I have to put up with Windows to be a PC gamer

With the advances in Proton thanks to Valve's push for the Steam Deck, Linux is by far the preferable alternative. I'd look into that before I looked into Mac gaming, 100%.

 

[Danny Dudekisser]

Can you please just leave me alone, Microsoft?

Completely unsurprised to see Yusuf Medhi tagged to this.

 

[winjer]

Bloatware embedded in keyboards.

 

[HerjansEagleFeeder]

With the advances in Proton thanks to Valve's push for the Steam Deck, Linux is by far the preferable alternative. I'd look into that before I looked into Mac gaming, 100%.

As a long time Mac user, I agree. I also don't buy into their latest efforts in terms of enabling Macs to play current PC titles. You're jailed into an gaming-unfriendly ecosystem where the performance is never at the level you'd want it to be, with no options to upgrade whatsoever other than outright buying a new machine for several thousand bucks that won't be fast enough either. Gaming on a Mac is stupid.

 

[KungFucius]

Fuck copilot. They use it in their power platform and it sits there and basically begs you to use it. When I click on it, it says that my flows are too complex to use it. FFS what is the point if it can only do really simplistic things? I do not want a key that if I hit by mistake, I get assaulted with useless crap.

 

[xrnzaaas]

Great, more stuff to disable after every big system update.

 

[poodaddy]

With the advances in Proton thanks to Valve's push for the Steam Deck, Linux is by far the preferable alternative. I'd look into that before I looked into Mac gaming, 100%.

This. It's utterly hilarious to say fuck Microsoft, and then consider moving to the scummiest intellectual thieves in the game who sell you hilariously marked up hardware simply because they know idiots with more money than sense will buy it.

How bout this, fuck Microsoft one time, fuck Apple three times over, that company is fucking scum and it should be burned to the ground. Worst tech company on the planet.

 

[Holammer]

MS forcing AI on the user (& tracking in general) is what's eventually going to make me jump the fence and go with Linux

 

[ManaByte]

I use Copilot all the time. It's the only way to filter out clickbait and rage bait with web searches now.

 

[Denton]

Hopefully the button will be remappable.

 

[Hudo]

Yeah, that sounds like a Microsoft idea.

 

[GHG]

I use Copilot all the time. It's the only way to filter out clickbait and rage bait with web searches now.

And you should be the judge of what's clickbait, not some AI.

Before you know it, it will be the one sending you clickbait/misinformation and you won't even know it because you decided to blindly trust it.

Godspeed.

 

[Sorcerer]

Microsoft probably thinks an extra key on a keyboard will be seen as added value buy the consumer. Extra key, gotta have this one!!! Maybe the the Elite 3 will have 5 paddles on the back to support a co-pilot key remapping.

 

[sigmaZ]

Adobe: "We're adding AI to monitor and help you"
Audacity: "We're adding AI to monitor and help you"
Windows: "We're adding AI to monitor and help you"

Call me cynical but it feels like AI is being used as an excuse to add more tracking software to our devices, why do most things suddenly need an AI?

Could be the case but AI in common apps if working properly can drastically speed up workflow in the same way that shortcuts and macros do.

 

[StereoVsn]

With the advances in Proton thanks to Valve's push for the Steam Deck, Linux is by far the preferable alternative. I'd look into that before I looked into Mac gaming, 100%.

Driving Linux on daily basis would be annoying for just regular desktop, IMO. And I work with a lot of Linux installs due to my job.

But for home stuff, Mac is a no brainer if you are already in the ecosystem (iPad/iPhone).

That said, gaming side hopefully Linux will keep advancing as Proton is pretty good now days as mentioned. Realistically one can probably use it for 80% of their gaming library fairly easily as long as it’s Steam.

MP titles and other Launchers are where some issues occur. Still, I just reinstalled Ubuntu on my older system and going to be tinkering with Linux gaming on it again.

Also, MS is super annoying with all this shit, and I actually don’t mind their account services as it makes it easy to reinstall/backup/etc.

Office 365 family is actually a solid deal as you can find it for around $/€70 usually and it covers up to 6 accounts with up to 5 devices each. 1TB storage, Office, hunch if other stuff, it’s not too bad. Just need to deal with MS.

 

[Topher]

 

[Topher]

Driving Linux on daily basis would be annoying for just regular desktop, IMO. And I work with a lot of Linux installs due to my job.

But for home stuff, Mac is a no brainer if you are already in the ecosystem (iPad/iPhone).

That said, gaming side hopefully Linux will keep advancing as Proton is pretty good now days as mentioned. Realistically one can probably use it for 80% of their gaming library fairly easily as long as it’s Steam.

MP titles and other Launchers are where some issues occur. Still, I just reinstalled Ubuntu on my older system and going to be tinkering with Linux gaming on it again.

Also, MS is super annoying with all this shit, and I actually don’t mind their account services as it makes it easy to reinstall/backup/etc.

Office 365 family is actually a solid deal as you can find it for around $/€70 usually and it covers up to 6 accounts with up to 5 devices each. 1TB storage, Office, hunch if other stuff, it’s not too bad. Just need to deal with MS.

My main non-gaming PC (that I'm typing on right now) is Linux. Ain't slick enough for the average user, I'm afraid. It is still rough around the edges and probably won't be unless some mega-corporation uses it and creates a highly polished UI for it, but then we are right back to having mega-corps on our desktops and all that bullshit that comes with that. Personally, once I got used to how things work with Linux, I was fine with it. For most, however, the only real alternative to Windows is Mac and for a lot of gamers that isn't going to be an option due to the power constraints of Apple Silicon.

 

[StereoVsn]

My main non-gaming PC (that I'm typing on right now) is Linux. Ain't slick enough for the average user, I'm afraid. It is still rough around the edges and probably won't be unless some mega-corporation uses it and creates a highly polished UI for it, but then we are right back to having mega-corps on our desktops and all that bullshit that comes with that. Personally, once I got used to how things work with Linux, I was fine with it. For most, however, the only real alternative to Windows is Mac and for a lot of gamers that isn't going to be an option due to the power constraints of Apple Silicon.

Yeah, there are still issues with consistency, support, etc… Now that doesn’t mean one can’t run it if you are decently technical but yeah for average populace it’s a bit too much.

Although you could probably take a distribution like Mint or Ubuntu and lock it down enough for basic computer tasks, ie web browsing, office (Libro Office or something) and basic photo/video editing.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

let's see how they fuck it up

 

[LordCBH]

Fuck of, Satya.

 

[Soodanim]

Driving Linux on daily basis would be annoying for just regular desktop, IMO. And I work with a lot of Linux installs due to my job.

But for home stuff, Mac is a no brainer if you are already in the ecosystem (iPad/iPhone).

That said, gaming side hopefully Linux will keep advancing as Proton is pretty good now days as mentioned. Realistically one can probably use it for 80% of their gaming library fairly easily as long as it’s Steam.

MP titles and other Launchers are where some issues occur. Still, I just reinstalled Ubuntu on my older system and going to be tinkering with Linux gaming on it again.

Also, MS is super annoying with all this shit, and I actually don’t mind their account services as it makes it easy to reinstall/backup/etc.

Office 365 family is actually a solid deal as you can find it for around $/€70 usually and it covers up to 6 accounts with up to 5 devices each. 1TB storage, Office, hunch if other stuff, it’s not too bad. Just need to deal with MS.

I suppose it probably depends largely on what your daily drive entails and how much that is affected by the inevitable sacrifices when coming from the most supported platform.

In all honesty I don't know what the Mac vs Linux support rate is these days, but personally if I were to drop Windows I'd look towards Linux. But that's me, I'm happy to tinker and learn. I can certainly see why people would go to Mac instead, it's just not for me.

 

[simpatico]

Not monetizing Clippy has been a disaster for the Microsoft corporation.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

Saw this on Reddit

BEHOLD

 

[Alexios]

Hope I can program it to any other function I want, more keys are always a good thing.

Just do a built in microphone so AI/assistants/whatever can work as on phones instead.

 

[Ozriel]

not sure what people expected, with the new and upcoming Intel, AMD, Nvidia and Qualcomm laptop chips having NPUs built in for on-device AI.

Pixel phones have on device AI. Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy S24 devices are heavily advertising on-device AI. Nearly every single Android flagship phone from here on out will push AI on-device.

Having a dedicated AI button on new hardware with those chips doesn’t seem to be an outlandish idea. Hopefully they allow people to remap it or reject it during setup so it’s an optional thing, like I did with Cortana.

 

[cyberheater]

It's become standard procedure to run disabling software on any installation of Windows, and if they are insisting on the new key then I'll be making it standard procedure to turn that key back into something else.

I can’t allow you to do that Dave…

 

[SmokedMeat]

No thank you.

 

[Tsaki]

You're welcome

 

[onQ123]

So I'm the only one that read Chipotle?

 

[T-800]

Well yeah, they also want to cram MS pluton into every cpu.

 

[Topher]

Hope I can program it to any other function I want, more keys are always a good thing.

Just do a built in microphone so AI/assistants/whatever can work as on phones instead.

Microsoft said if Copilot is disabled then this key will launch Windows Search instead. I doubt we will be able to remap this to anything useful. And looking at the keyboard they are showing, it looks like this replaces the CTRL key that is normally on the right side so not really getting more keys.

 

[Snake29]

First thing you do with every major update is turn off a lot of shit they have running in the background via regedit, settings menu or powershell. Luckely, most gamers have their own custom mechanical keyboard with their own keycaps (hugs is Nuphy Field 75).

All people should do these things first on Windows:













Just pick something you see here.

 

[Alexios]

Microsoft said if Copilot is disabled then this key will launch Windows Search instead. I doubt we will be able to remap this to anything useful. And looking at the keyboard they are showing, it looks like this replaces the CTRL key that is normally on the right side so not really getting more keys.

Well some laptops skip right ctrl so if they now get this while skipping that that's an extra key still. That photo looks like a small profile/size keyboard so maybe that's the reason for the lack of right ctrl rather than the new key. Can probably reprogram it with 3rd party software? My Steelseries keyboard has extra steelseries key next to right Alt, it's used for various button combinations for media functions and stuff. I prefered my old phat MS multimedia keyboard with individual media keys and other stuff which could be reprogrammed (it had MSN Messenger key lol, I used it for aeons and only replaced it when it basically stopped working right in newer Windows that didn't have support for its proper drivers, though some extra buttons worked still, I really liked it and looked for similar but newer models/versions looked worse and weird to me) but that's ok too.

 

[BlackTron]

MS gonna MS same shit different decade.

 

[Topher]

Well some laptops skip right ctrl so if they now get this while skipping that that's an extra key still. That photo looks like a small profile/size keyboard so maybe that's the reason for the lack of right ctrl rather than the new key.

Perhaps. Personally I'm hoping this key will be limited to Surface laptops. I really don't think a dedicated key is needed for this across the board.

 

[Soodanim]

Microsoft said if Copilot is disabled then this key will launch Windows Search instead. I doubt we will be able to remap this to anything useful. And looking at the keyboard they are showing, it looks like this replaces the CTRL key that is normally on the right side so not really getting more keys.

I didn't check, and guessed it would replace RWin. I love RCtrl. Luckily for me PowerToys will let me remap pretty much whatever I want if I do encounter this one day.

 

[Mr.Phoenix]

I don't get, why is this a problem?

 

[deriks]

Just seems like it could put some users on Edge.

 

[MiguelItUp]

Just another new setting to deactivate.

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Also if the goal of bundling Copilot with Windows is to reduce the use of competitor AI techs (which it is), we can expect an antitrust investigation of this, it's no different from bundling Internet Explorer with Windows back in the day which led to one of the world's most infamous antitrust trials

Yeah that's gonna be a sticky point for them to deal with. They'll have to let OEMs offer their own tools/utilities that let users map the button for other AI-powered software, at the very least.

Altho regulators like the EC seem perfectly fine letting companies like MS get away with these sort of things as long as they line their pockets pay the fines.

 

[Mister Wolf]

Just get it over with and start calling it Skynet.

 

[Audiophile]

The "quickly unravelling toilet roll" key.