What you need to know
- As Intel finally, fully reveals its next generation of Core Ultra laptop chips, we finally have some information on when the company will be offering Microsoft's Copilot+.
- The new chips and laptops are being revealed this week at IFA in Berlin.
- According to Intel, Copilot+ will be supported on Lunar Lake machines beginning in November 2024, a little earlier than we were all anticipating.
- It's now clear that AMD's Ryzen AI 300 laptops will also receive access starting in November.
The Copilot+ PC family is about to start growing, as Intel has officially announced its arrival in the program and when we'll be seeing it.
As part of the overall news on Lunar Lake's debut, also to be known as the Intel Core Ultra 200V series (catchy, isn't it), there's a specific quote of note regarding Copilot+.
"All designs featuring Intel Core Ultra 200V series processors and running the latest version of Windows are eligible to receive Copilot+ PC features as a free update starting in November."
We've all be under the assumption that Qualcomm had some kind of exclusivity agreement with Microsoft on Copilot+, and waiting until 2025 for it to appear on other machines certainly felt like a possibility. Intel's statement is the first concrete information we've had of Copilot+ breaking free of Snapdragon-powered laptops.
What does it actually mean? Well, from November, new Intel laptops will have access to AI-accelerated features in Windows 11, including Cocreator, Live Captions, and yes, when it eventually arrives, Windows Recall. First generation Core Ultra laptops won't be joining in, though, as the NPU on these chips doesn't mean the minimum performance spec required for Copilot+.
Of course, AI is far more than just the Copilot+ feature set, and Core Ultra 200V series laptops will be able to use features in third-party software from the likes of Adobe, DaVinci Resolve, Capcut, and more.
In a Windows blog post that went live shortly after Intel's announcement, it was revealed that AMD laptops with Ryzen AI 300 chips will also receive access in November.
What about NVIDIA?
The fact that Intel is making this statement now — with AMD in the same access window — opens up the possibility of NVIDIA getting in on the Copilot+ action soon, too. Back at Computex earlier this year, NVIDIA first announced that laptops with its 40 series GPUs inside would be getting Copilot+. It was pretty vague, lacking in any type of timeline, and only name-dropped a handful of laptops. The update is going to be free, as with Intel. NVIDIA's GPUs have an insane amount of performance for AI compared to the NPUs being used by Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD, and they're the most widely used of them all right now.
This announcement from Intel and AMD, though, would at least suggest we might be seeing NVIDIA getting into Copilot+ before the curtain falls on 2024. It'd be hard to see how Microsoft, after initial Qualcomm exclusivity, could then exclude NVIDIA when it starts rolling out to other platforms. If Intel and AMD are starting in November, it wouldn't be a bad bet that NVIDIA would be joining in the last two months of the year.
I've written previously that the biggest problem with Copilot+ is that Microsoft launched it and ignored millions of existing users. Forcing people to buy new hardware to get new features might fly on smartphones, but when there's already hardware out there more than capable, it does feel like a slap in the face. Fortunately, the full Windows 11 24H2 roll out is set to start soon, and not long after, the Copilot+ family will start to grow.
