Microsoft’s Copilot AI could soon help Windows 11 users deal with texting on their Android smartphone (and much more besides in the future).
Windows Latest noticed that there’s a new plug-in for Copilot (the recently introduced add-ons that bring extra functionality to the AI assistant), which is reportedly rolling out to more people this week. It’s called the ‘Phone’ plug-in – which is succinct and very much to the point.
As you might guess, the plug-in works by leveraging the Phone Link app that connects your mobile to your Windows 11 PC and offers all sorts of nifty features therein.
So, you need to have Phone Link app up and running before you can install the Copilot Phone plug-in. Once that’s done, Windows Latest explains that the abilities you’ll gain include being able to use Copilot to read and send text messages on your Android device (via the PC, of course), or look up contact information.
Right now, the plug-in doesn’t work properly, mind you, but doubtless Microsoft will be ironing out any problems. When Windows Latest tried to initiate a phone call, the plug-in didn’t facilitate this, but did provide the correct contact info, so they could dial themselves.
The fact that this functionality is very basic looking right now means Google will hardly be losing any sleep – and moreover, this isn’t a direct rival for the Gemini AI app anyway, as it works to facilitate managing your Android device on your PC desktop.
Expect far greater powers to come in the future
Microsoft has previously teased the kind of powers Copilot will eventually have when it comes to hooking up your Windows 11 PC and Android phone together. For example, the AI will be able to sift through texts on your phone and extract relevant information (like the time of a dinner reservation, if you’ve made arrangements via text).
Eventually, this plug-in could be really handy, but right now, it’s still in a very early working state as noted.
While it’s for Android only for the time being, the Phone plug-in for Copilot should be coming to iOS as well, as Microsoft caters for iPhones with Phone Link (albeit in a more limited fashion). Still, this isn’t confirmed, but we can’t imagine Microsoft will leave iPhone owners completely out in the cold when it comes to AI features such as this.
When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, it set off alarm bells at Google HQ about what OpenAI’s artificial intelligence (AI) tool could mean for Google’s lucrative search business. Now, those fears seem to be coming true, as OpenAI is set for a surprise announcement next week that could upend the search world forever.
According to Reuters, OpenAI plans to launch a Google search competitor that would be underpinned by its large language model (LLM) tech. The big scoop here is the date that OpenAI has apparently set for the unveiling: Monday, May 13.
Intriguingly, that’s just one day before the mammoth Google I/O 2024 show, which is usually one of the biggest Google events of the year. Google often uses the event to promote its latest advances in search and AI, so it will have little time to react to whatever OpenAI decides to reveal the day before.
The timing suggests that OpenAI is really gunning for Google’s crown and aims to upstage the search giant on its home turf. The stakes, therefore, could not be higher for both firms.
OpenAI vs Google
(Image credit: Shutterstock.com / rafapress)
We’ve heard rumors before that OpenAI has an AI-based search engine up its sleeve. Bloomberg, for example, recently reported that OpenAI’s search engine will be able to pull in data from the web and include citations in its results. News outlet The Information, meanwhile, has made similar claims that OpenAI is “developing a web search product”, and there has been a near-constant stream of whispers to this effect for months.
But even without the direct leaks and rumors, it has been clear for a while that tools like ChatGPT present an alternative way of sourcing information to the more traditional search engines. You can ask ChatGPT to fetch information on almost any topic you can think of and it will bring up the answers in seconds (albeit sometimes with factual inaccuracies). ChatGPT Plus can access information on the web if you’re a paid subscriber, and it looks like this will soon be joined by OpenAI’s dedicated search engine.
Of course, Google isn’t going to go down without a fight. The company has been pumping out updates to its Gemini chatbot, as well as incorporating various AI features into its existing search engine, including AI-generated answers in a box on the results page.
Whether OpenAI’s search engine will be enough to knock Google off its perch is anyone’s guess, but it’s clear that the company’s success with ChatGPT has prompted Google to radically rethink its search offering. Come next week, we might get a clearer picture of how the future of search will look.
The update for Snipping Tool is in the process of rolling out to testers in the Canary and Dev channels, and it comes alongside a minor update for the Paint app too, so let’s get that out of the way first (and we’ll come back to that major Bing change later).
The new version of Paint (v11.2404.42.0) comes with a small but notable tweak. Microsoft has decided its AI feature that knocks up pictures for the user upon request is no long called ‘Cocreator’ but is now ‘Image Creator.’
As for Snipping Tool, with version 11.2404.37.0, Microsoft is introducing the ability to drop emoji into screenshots, which you can move around or resize before planting them in the image.
Also new is functionality that detects QR codes in screenshots, allowing you to instantly follow where the code is linking to.
Finally, Microsoft has added the ability to change the opacity of a shape fill, and the ruler tool has returned.
Remember, this is all just in testing for now, and you can find the full details of the changes in Microsoft’s blog post.
Analysis: Bing search in the mix
Most of these Windows 11 Snipping Tool changes were spotted already, hidden in test builds, so it’s no surprise to see them formally arrive in the app. And speaking of hidden features, there’s another one that’s just been pointed out by leaker PhantomOfEarth on X (formerly Twitter).
Another feature coming soon to Snipping Tool (yes, more!): visual search with Bing. pic.twitter.com/h6HOblr0RqMay 9, 2024
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As mentioned at the outset, this appears to be Microsoft cramming Bing into yet another of its products by way of a ‘Visual search with Bing’ option. This is functionality that will fire up an image search, with the Bing engine, for the current screenshot. Although we don‘t know how it‘ll work yet, it could present results in-line in the app (in a panel, maybe), or more likely open the search in Edge. (Microsoft will never miss a chance to get Edge open, let‘s face it).
Although in fairness, this feature could be useful to some, others may regard it as cluttering up Snipping Tool‘s menu. At any rate, this isn’t actually in testing – it’s not rolling out yet, anyway, but the leaker suggests it likely will soon.
Regarding the change of name in Paint, Image Creator is a more direct and to the point name for the feature than Cocreator. As well as bringing it in line with Microsoft’s use of this name elsewhere, this could be read as an indication that the AI powers of Paint won’t be expanded any further than image generation. (As Cocreator kind of suggests an assistant with more sweeping powers, perhaps).
Windows 11’s Share menu is getting a new feature – the ability to share links as QR codes that a smartphone or other suitable device can scan (you can check out our guides on how to scan QR codes with an iPhone or with an Android).
The Share menu isn’t the most widely used, especially outside of Microsoft’s own apps and services, but Microsoft looks like it’s hoping to boost its popularity by making the sharing of web pages more seamless, especially across different devices.
This feature is part of a new preview version, Windows 11 build 26212, available to Windows Insiders through the Canary Channel. The build saw the introduction of a button that generates a QR code within the Share menu dialog box, which will apply to Microsoft Edge and other supported apps. People can generate QR codes for URL addresses and cloud files in the Windows 11 Share menu, which is opened in most apps by clicking the share button in the app’s toolbar.
Once you have the preview build installed and you follow the process to generate a QR code, you can then open the Camera app or dedicated QR scanner on your device, and hold it up to the screen.
(Image credit: Shutterstock/pongsuk sapukdee)
More about the new Share window
Writing in a blog post publicizing the development, Microsoft explains that the Share menu will not close if you accidentally (or deliberately) click outside of it. To close it, you’ll have to click the close button in the top right corner.
There’s also an added provision if you use your Gmail address for your Microsoft Account: you can send yourself an email from the share window and receive it in your Gmail inbox (instead of just Outlook/Hotmail accounts).
A similar process already exists in Windows 11 for people who have Phone Link set up on multiple devices. These users can send a link via the Share menu, but this development makes it even easier to share things across devices as you don’t have to log in or set up anything after installing the preview build.
We’ll have to see if this makes the Share menu more popular with users, as most people are used to the clipboard functions in Windows for moving information from one place to another, or they just save the data to the device they’re currently using to retrieve when they need it.
This development isn’t a dramatically big change, which means it can be easy to adopt, but also easy to miss. It’s also still in the testing stage, so we’ll have to wait and see if and when Microsoft chooses to fully adopt it in a future Windows 11 update.
If you’re running an unactivated version of Windows 11 (or Windows 10), your access to Microsoft Edge’s settings might be restricted in the future. This is already the case when it comes to things like Personalization settings for Windows 11 in an unactivated installation, as well as constant reminders prompting you to activate the OS.
If you don’t mind those constraints and plentiful reminders, you can install and run Windows 11 and Windows 10 without activation for free.
However, it seems like Microsoft has added multiple flags in testing that allow for blocking certain browser capabilities in an Edge preview build – if you’re using Windows 11 (or Windows 10) and it’s unactivated. The three flags in question in Edge spotted by Windows Latest are:
msEdgeActivatedStateCheckAndUpdate
msEdgeNonActivatedOSTrigger
msEdgeLockSettingsInNonActivatedOS
Looking to see the effects of each of these flags being enabled, Windows Latest tried running the Edge Canary test build with one flag enabled at a time. Windows Latest turned on the ‘msEdgeLockSettingsInNonActivatedOS’ flag successfully, which resulted in some of Edge’s settings being locked. Then, when Edge’s settings page was opened, it displayed a banner that stated:
“We notice your Windows is not activated, some customization has been limited.”
Pushing further, Windows Latest explored other parts of Edge settings and also discovered that the ‘When Edge starts’ panel (which allows for configuration of what happens when the browser launches) was blocked due to Windows 11 not being activated.
An unwise move?
This is an interesting strategy that doesn’t entirely make sense to me, because as Windows Latest points out, the policy seemingly only targets Windows – Edge users on Mac devices and mobiles don’t see this kind of interference. That makes me think, well, Microsoft is mulling this move simply because it can, and if you want Windows enough to install it, then you want the OS enough to tolerate measures like this.
Considering how clearly desperate Microsoft is for more people to use Edge, having instigated multiple instances of aggressively pushing users to make Edge their browser of choice, this strategy is even more puzzling since it could drive people away (having finally gotten what Microsoft wants, apparently!).
If you want to continue using Windows unactivated, you could just switch to Chrome, Firefox, or another of the best web browsers that doesn’t have these restrictions. It’s worth remembering that this development is still in the early testing stages, though, and hopefully won’t make it to the final version rollout – but I wouldn’t put it past Microsoft.
While the focus of Apple’s May 7 special event was mostly hardware — four new iPads, a new Apple Pencil, and a new Magic Keyboard — there were mentions of AI with the M2 and M4 chips as well as new versions of Final Cut Pro and Logic Pro for the tablets.
The latter is all about new AI-infused or powered features that let you create a drum beat or a piano riff or even add a warmer, more distorted feel to a recorded element. Even neater, Logic Pro for iPad 2 can now take a single recording and split it into individual tracks based on the instruments in a matter of seconds.
It’s a look behind the curtain at the kind of AI features Apple sees the biggest appeal and affordance with. Notably, unlike some rollouts from Google or OpenAI, it’s not a chatbot or an image generator. With Logic Pro, you're getting features that can be genuinely helpful and further expand what you can do within an app.
A trio of AI-powered additions for Logic Pro for iPad
Stem Splitter can separate a single track into four individual ones split up by instrument. (Image credit: Apple)
Arguably the most helpful feature for musicians will be Stem Splitter, which aims to solve the problem of separating out elements within a given track. Say you’re working through a track or giving an impromptu performance at a cafe; you might just hit record in Voice Memos on an iPhone or using a single microphone.
The result is one track that contains all the instruments mixed. Logic Pro 2 can now import that track, analyze it, and split it into four tracks: vocals, drums, bass and other instruments. It won’t change the sound but essentially puts each element on a separate track, allowing you to easily modify or edit it. You can even place plugins, something that Logic is known for, on iPad and the Mac.
The iPad Pro with M4 will likely be mighty speedy when tackling this thanks to its 16-core neural processing unit, but it will work on any iPad with Apple Silicon through a mixture of on-device AI and deep learning. For musicians big or small, it’s poised to be a simple, intuitive way to convert voice memos into workable and mixable tracks.
AI-powered instruments to complete a track
A look at the Bass Session Player within Logic Pro for iPad 2. (Image credit: Apple)
Building on Stem Splitter is a big expansion with Session Players. Logic Pro has long offered Dummer — both on Mac and iPad — as a way to easily add drums to a track via a virtual player that can be customized by style and even complexity. Logic Pro for iPad 2 adds a piano and bass player to the mix, which are extremely adjustable session players for any given track. With piano, in particular, you can customize the individual left or right hand’s playing style, pick between four types of piano, and use a plethora of other sliding tools. It's even smart enough to recognize where on a track it is, be it a chorus or a bridge. It only took a few seconds to come up with a decent-sized track as well on an iPad Pro.
If you’re only a singer or desperately need a bass line for your track, Logic Pro for iPad 2 aims to solve this with an output that plays with and complements any existing track.
Rounding out this AI expansion for Logic Pro on the iPad is a Chromaglow effect, which takes a common, expensive piece of hardware reserved for studios and places it on the iPad to add a bit more space, color, and even warmth to the track. Like other Logic plugins, you can pick between a few presets and further adjust them.
Interestingly enough, alongside these updates, Apple didn’t show off any new Apple Pencil integrations for Logic Pro for iPad 2. I’d have to imagine that we might see a customized experience with the palette tool at some point.
It’s clear that Apple’s approach to AI, like its other software, services, and hardware, is centered around crafting a meaningful experience for whoever uses it. In this case, for musicians, it’s solving pain points and opening doors for creativity further.
Stem Splitter, new session players, and Chromaglow feel right at home within Logic Pro, and I expect to see similar enhancements to other Apple apps announced at WWDC. Just imagine an easier way to edit photos or videos baked into the Photos app or a way to streamline or condense a presentation within Keynote.
Pricing and Availability
All of these features are bundled in with Logic Pro for iPad 2, which is set to roll out and launch on May 13, 2024. If you’re already subscribed at $ 4.99 a month or $ 49 for the year, you’ll get the update for free, and there is no price increase if you’re new to the app. Additionally, you can get a one-month free trial of first-time Logic Pro for iPad users.
If you’re a Windows 11 user who isn’t quite ready to leave the operating system behind but would like a break from seeing ads all over the place, I have some news that might make you feel better. There’s a free app that cuts out ads to make your Windows 11 experience a little less frustrating – it’s called OFGB, which amusingly stands for ‘Oh Frick Go Back.’
OFGB makes use of your system’s Windows Registry to disable all kinds of ads, including File Explorer ads, Lock Screen tips and tricks, Settings ads, “Finish Setup” ads, “Welcome Experience” ads, personalized ads, “Tailored Experiences, and Start Menu ads. It’s easy to use, and you can pick and pick and choose which of these you’d like to turn off by simply ticking the appropriate boxes (frankly, I’d recommend turning them all off).
How to get your hands on OFGB
You can download OFGB from its official GitHub page, and there are two versions: a self-contained (but larger) version and one that isn’t self-contained (meaning it depends on external software components to run). If you’re not familiar with coding and are unsure which version to get, I’d recommend the first version (OFGB-Deps.exe).
Also, make sure you get one of the versions of the Source code files (I’d recommend the .zip file). Download these files, and click OFGB-Deps.exe to begin the installation.
Oh frick, this is perfect
OFGB was created by Arch Linux user (Arch is a customizable version of Linux) xM4ddy on GitHub, who herself has had enough of Windows ads being injected in every nook and cranny of the OS. She gave the following quote about her frustrations with Tom’s Hardware:
“Windows lost me a long time ago by adding more and more telemetry, ads, and the lack of easily configurable options.”
You can also see a demo and read more from the creator in her Reddit post publicizing the new app.
OFGB joins an existing platoon of third-party workarounds that enable you to make automated edits to the Windows Registry so that you see fewer ads. There’s also Wintoys, an app that recently saw a major update, and Tiny 11 Builder, a tool for creating your own slimmed-down version of Windows 11, which also recently got an upgrade.
OFGB looks like a clean, straightforward solution if the ads are something that bothers you, but only if you’re confident about trying custom third-party apps – if you’re not, it’s best to stick to using Windows as it comes.
That said, you might be looking to take the leap, and you wouldn’t be alone – Windows 11 is reportedly losing market share to its predecessor Windows 10, which is set to no longer be supported by Microsoft next year, and many people have been expressing their anger at Microsoft’s ramping up and insistent ads in Windows 11 for a good while now. I wonder if third-party apps like OFGB will continue to work, because I could see Microsoft making every effort to push ads through – as it clearly isn’t paying much attention to the chorus of existing complaints.
You’ve probably noticed a few AI-generated images sprinkled throughout your different social media feeds – and there are likely a few you’ve probably scrolled right past, that may have slipped your keen eyes.
For those of us who have been immersed in the world of generative AI, spotting AI images is a little easier, as you develop a mental checklist of what to look out for.
However, as the technology gets better and better, it is going to get a lot harder to tell. To solve this, OpenAI is developing new methods to track AI-generated images and prove what has and has not been artificially generated.
According to a blog post, OpenAI’s new proposed methods will add a tamper-resistant ‘watermark’ that will tag content with invisible ‘stickers.’ So, if an image is generated with OpenAI’s DALL-E generator, the classifier will flag it even if the image is warped or saturated.
The blog post claims the tool will have around a 98% accuracy when spotting images made with DALL-E. However, it will only flag 5-10% of pictures from other generators like Midjourney or Adobe Firefly.
So, it’s great for in-house images, but not so great for anything produced outside of OpenAI. While it may not be as impressive as one would hope in some respects, it’s a positive sign that OpenAI is starting to address the flood of AI images that are getting harder and harder to distinguish.
Okay, so this may not seem like a big deal to some, as a lot of instances of AI-generated images are either memes or high-concept art that are pretty harmless. But that said, there’s also a surge of scenarios now where people are creating hyper-realistic fake photos of politicians, celebrities, people in their lives, and more besides, that could lead to misinformation being spread at an incredibly fast pace.
Hopefully, as these kinds of countermeasures get better and better, the accuracy will only improve, and we can have a much more accessible way to double-check the authenticity of the images we come across in our day-to-day life.
Apple announced the M4 chip, a powerful new upgrade that will arrive in next-generation iPad (and, further down the line, the best Macbooks and Macs). You can check out our beat-by-beat coverage of the Apple event, but one element of the presentation has left some users confused: what exactly does TOPS mean?
TOPS is an acronym for 'trillion operations per second', and is essentially a hardware-specific measure of AI capabilities. More TOPS means faster on-chip AI performance, in this case the Neural Engine found on the Apple M4 chip.
The M4 chip is capable of 38 TOPS – that's 38,000,000,000,000 operations per second. If that sounds like a staggeringly massive number, well, it is! Modern neural processing units (NPUs) like Apple's Neural Engine are advancing at an incredibly rapid rate; for example, Apple's own A16 Bionic chip, which debuted in the iPhone 14 Pro less than two years ago, offered 17 TOPS.
Apple's new chip isn't even the most powerful AI chip about to hit the market – Qualcomm's upcoming Snapdragon X Elite purportedly offers 45 TOPS, and is expected to land in Windows laptops later this year.
How is TOPS calculated?
The processes by which we measure AI performance are still in relative infancy, but TOPS provides a useful and user-accessible metric for discerning how 'good' at handling AI tools a given processor is.
I'm about to get technical, so if you don't care about the mathematics, feel free to skip ahead to the next section! The current industry standard for calculating TOPS is TOPS = 2 × MAC unit count × Frequency / 1 trillion. 'MAC' stands for multiply-accumulate; a MAC operation is basically a pair of calculations (a multiplication and an addition) that are run by each MAC unit on the processor once every clock cycle, powering the formulas that make AI models function. Every NPU has a set number of MAC units determined by the NPU's microarchitecture.
'Frequency' here is defined by the clock speed of the processor in question – specifically, how many cycles it can process per second. It's a common metric also used in CPUs, GPUs, and other components, essentially denoting how 'fast' the component is.
So, to calculate how many operations per second an NPU can handle, we simply multiply the MAC unit count by 2 for our number of operations, then multiply that by the frequency. This gives us an 'OPS' figure, which we then divide by a trillion to make it a bit more palatable (and kinder on your zero key when typing it out).
Simply put, more TOPS means better, faster AI performance.
Adobe’s Firefly generative AI tool can be hardware-accelerated by your device’s NPU. (Image credit: Adobe)
Why is TOPS important?
TOPS is, in the simplest possible terms, our current best way to judge the performance of a device for running local AI workloads. This applies both to the industry and the wider public; it's a straightforward number that lets professionals and consumers immediately compare the baseline AI performance of different devices.
TOPS is only applicable for on-device AI, meaning that cloud-based AI tools (like the internet's favorite AI bot, ChatGPT) don't typically benefit from better TOPS. However, local AI is becoming more and more prevalent, with popular professional software like the Adobe Creative Cloud suite starting to implement more AI-powered features that depend on the capabilities of your device.
It should be noted that TOPS is by no means a perfect metric. At the end of the day, it's a theoretical figure derived from hardware statistics and can differ greatly from real-world performance. Factors such as power availability, thermal systems, and overclocking can impact the actual speed at which an NPU can run AI workloads.
To that end, though, we're now starting to see AI benchmarks crop up, such as Procyon AI from UL Benchmarks (makers of the popular 3DMark and PCMark benchmarking programs). These can provide a much more realistic idea of how well a You can expect to see TechRadar running AI performance tests as part of our review benchmarking in the near future!
AI Explorer is expected to integrate into Windows 11 and be able to log all of your PC activity, including what websites you visit, which apps you open, and what documents you edit, in order to make your activity searchable. This hefty amount of data to be captured by AI Explorer is why rumors suggest that the feature will only be available on PCs with powerful components that feature NPCUs dedicated to AI tasks.
(Image credit: Shutterstock/ARMMY PICCA)
AI Explorer's screen comprehension and cursor transformation
Insights gleaned from combing over preview builds suggest that AI Explorer is being built to be able to comprehend what’s happening on your screen, make suggestions based on that information, and make all of your previous activity searchable. According to Windows Latest, AI Explorer will be context-friendly and appear at the top of your screen when prompted.
The references to cursors designed for AI Explorer were found in a new Windows file and shared by Microsoft watcher Albacore (@thebookisclosed) on X, who applied these files to see how the cursor transforms for demo purposes. So far, it’s predicted that the new-look mouse cursors will only be for AI Explorer, but how these will be implemented in Windows 11 is for Microsoft to reveal.
Some new cursors found in AIX DLLs (applied them in place of the regular pointer & text selection for demo purposes) pic.twitter.com/lf6AFUkXUaApril 22, 2024
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Insights from Microsoft's 'Sophia' AI cursor for Office
The new AI Explorer cursors might follow the path of an AI cursor that Microsoft has already introduced – a Microsoft Office AI cursor codenamed “Sophia.” In November 2023, Microsoft wrote about Project “Sophia” on its official Learn blog, where it explained that the endeavor is still a preview feature, how the AI cursor would work, and provided instructions on how to use it, accompanied with explanatory screenshots.
Using the keyboard screenshot Alt + C, you’re able to interact with a chosen part of what you’re seeing on screen, as well as the text that’s generated by a large language model (LLM) in response to your query. When talking about how Microsoft Office’s AI cursor functions, Microsoft explains that it can respond to natural language commands and is able to provide recommendations based on the provided context as you navigate the contents of your screen.
This could give us some idea of what Microsoft is exploring when it comes to developing AI cursors and how they’ll be adopted into familiar parts of Windows.
(Image credit: Microsoft)
When we expect to see AI Explorer in play
We don’t know exactly when Microsoft will debut AI Explorer and its new cursor, but Windows Latest suggests that AI Explorer will be announced along with a new line-up of Snapdragon X Elite-powered Windows 11 AI PCs at Microsoft’s annual developer-focused conference, Microsoft Build 2024 later this month May. AI Explorer is apparently going to be exclusively available to those who purchase one of these new Snapdragon X Elite PCs equipped with 16GB of RAM, 256GB of SSD storage, and a 45 TOPs NPU chip.
Microsoft’s push to convince Windows 10 users to upgrade to Windows 11 has been rubbing people up the wrong way for a while, and the concept of AI cursors is intriguing, but it could also prove divisive. Lots of people just don’t want AI in their devices yet. Also, I could see a lot of users being wary of having an even greater amount of data collected and stored (although it sounds like it’ll live locally on your device, for now). Those users might feel compelled to stick to older devices that aren’t compatible with features like AI Explorer, but that fact won’t stop Microsoft from trying.
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