Microsoft announces "most significant change to the Windows keyboard" in 30 years — adds dedicated AI Copilot key to all future PCs
What you need to know
Microsoft has announced that upcoming Windows PCs will be equipped with a dedicated Copilot key.
The Copilot key will act as a shortcut for opening the Windows Copilot interface, which launched late last year.
The first PCs with the Copilot key will be announced at CES 2024 next week.
Microsoft has announced what it's calling the "first significant change to the Windows PC keyboard in nearly three decades," with the introduction of a new dedicated Windows Copilot AI hardware key that will ship on upcoming Windows devices starting next month.
Yusef Mehdi, Executive Vice President & Consumer Chief Marketing Officer at Microsoft says the company is preparing to usher in an era of more personal and intelligent computing driven by AI experiences, which will be seamlessly woven into Windows across OS, apps, and silicon.
In fact, the company says 2024 will be the year of the "AI PC." To double down on this idea, it's introducing the Windows Copilot key which will begin shipping on new Windows PCs starting in February. The first PCs with this new key are expected to be announced as soon as next week at CES 2024.
Microsoft does confirm that future Surface PCs will also include the new Copilot key, but no new Surface hardware announcements are being made today. We expect that the next Surface PCs will be the Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6, with next-gen Intel and Arm chips, and a new design for the Surface Laptop line.
These new AI PCs will have that dedicated Copilot key on the keyboard, in most cases positioned on the right side of the keyboard where the context menu key is usually situated. Microsoft tells me that this new Copilot key will be made mandatory for OEMs shipping Windows PCs at some point in the near future.
Microsoft says the Copilot key will make it easy for users to invoke the Windows Copilot interface, which we noted began showing up for most people in our Windows 11 version 23H2 review last year. For users who don't have Copilot enabled, the Copilot key will simply open Windows Search.
Windows and AI are about to become a lot more intertwined
Microsoft is gearing up to ship a major Windows update later this year that will primarily focus on delivering "next-gen" AI experiences across Windows. In today's blogpost, Yusef Mehdi even teases that this is what Microsoft is working on for 2024:
"... we will be ushering in a significant shift toward a more personal and intelligent computing future where AI will be seamlessly woven into Windows from the system, to the silicon, to the hardware."
Microsoft has very big plans for AI in Windows this year, including a new AI Explorer that will make searching for apps and files incredibly powerful and easy, using natural language and a new user history/timeline feature to find conversations, apps, and documents that you've had on display in the past.
I've already written about some of the AI experiences you can expect to see in the next major Windows update, codenamed Hudson Valley, and it's fair to say the AI Copilot we have today is just the start. Microsoft is all in on AI, and Windows is next on Microsoft's list for an "AI upgrade."
The company says 2024 is the year of the AI PC, and this is all going to be enabled by new Windows PCs and the upcoming Windows Hudson Valley release.
