by tonyedgecombe on 1/4/24, 1:18 PM
You can imagine how this came about. Nadella issued a decree that every division has to come up with an idea of how to integrate AI into their product. The keyboard people thought they would add another key. I dread to think what the mouse designers are planning.
by dreamcompiler on 1/4/24, 1:10 PM
Microsoft is obviously making up for their huge mistake of not adding a Bitcoin key ten years ago.
by hubraumhugo on 1/4/24, 1:20 PM
A good example of why AI favors big tech incumbents. They have all the distribution advantage and can now natively integrate AI into their products.
by xnzakg on 1/4/24, 12:31 PM
Neat! Hopefully this means we get an extra remappable key on Linux!
by jariz on 1/4/24, 1:04 PM
This reminds me of that video where LGR reviewed a keyboard with a PIZZA keyboard key. Probably more useful of a usecase than this really... (
https://youtu.be/USQxZc9nmtE)
by pzmarzly on 1/4/24, 12:37 PM
by NamTaf on 1/4/24, 12:52 PM
This feels exactly like back in the early 2000s when I used to physically rip the windows key off my keyboard because I’d accidentally hit it when playing a game and it’d mess everything up.
by jacquesm on 1/4/24, 1:13 PM
Microsoft is just aiming to revive their monopoly but this time through AI. Beware. You think Google is bad? It is. But wait until MS can get their hooks into you with AI products that know just about everything about you and that tattle your every action back to the MotherShip in order to make it that much more sticky.
by Bouncingsoul1 on 1/4/24, 12:56 PM
Seems like finally the year of the linux desktop has come.
by shdon on 1/4/24, 12:52 PM
Unless it can be used as a more or less generic modifier key, I don't really see the point of a key dedicated to this one function. The placement on the keyboard in the photo would suggest that either the space bar is shrunk down or one of the keys to its right is removed to accommodate the new key. That doesn't seem optimal to me. Maybe the dedicated context menu key can be removed, which is equally useless as it replaces just a single mouse click (and feels less predictable than that click, as it's not as obvious where the menu will appear).
Ignoring the marketeer drivel of how "excited" they are and how a single key on a keyboard would make AI any more useful, I have to wonder how many people would actually use it. People who see AI as a threat or distrust it (or just don't think it has a place in an OS) will likely ignore it, disable it, or be annoyed by it. People who are enthusiastic about it would probably be just as likely to simply put it in a prominent spot on the task bar for easy access.
Feels like, just because ChatGPT and Dall-E etc are the "hot (semi-)new thing", this is just an effort to jump on to that bandwagon. I wouldn't be surprised if Copilot (at least insofar as it is integrated in Windows) will meet the same fate as Cortana.
As a practical question (I've not got Win11 and haven't experienced Copilot on there): what does it [i.e. Copilot] actually bring to the Windows desktop experience? Does it make anything more efficient, easier or more discoverable? I can't for the life of me think of a reason I'd need an AI to do any of the stuff I use my desktop OS for. At least the Bing chatbot (while creepy) in Skype makes some sense for the interface, but that doesn't seem to have its tendrils deep into the OS.
by baz00 on 1/4/24, 1:10 PM
I really wish they would just piss off with this. I have found no actual real world life improvements on the windows ecosystem from the integration of copilot at all. Anything that it has attempted to do actually removed the determinism I had in the existing process or did something to piss me off. It's like having Mr Clippy shoved down your throat constantly and being told it's a good thing without a single use case making sense for me at all. Literally I can't think of an actual use for it and I've tried. It's like pair programming with a chimp.
I'm still bitter that the menu key seems to have disappeared from the keyboards recently.
by Xeamek on 1/4/24, 1:31 PM
Can't wait for an LLM query-and-response taking less time then it takes a file explorer to open.
Trully a well designed user experience
by maximus-decimus on 1/4/24, 1:48 PM
I plan to use it just as much as my Bixby button on my Galaxy phone (not at all)
by Hamuko on 1/4/24, 12:35 PM
They should just have it say "Copilot" instead of the weird logo they have for Copilot. That way it'd be future-proof for all of the future (AI) products also called Copilot that Microsoft will launch.
by prepend on 1/4/24, 12:42 PM
I used to use windows a few hours a day. Almost every day I would have to track down a rogue process that pegged my cpu and sometimes disk and would bring other programs to a halt.
It was almost always Cortana or index service or disk defender or something Microsoft added with very good intentions. And I would deprioritize it, or tune it, or disable it if it was optional. And every time, Microsoft would turn it back on against my configuration settings and wishes and it would start messing up my system.
The most frustrating part of this was googling and debugging and finding many other people struggling with this, for years; and Microsoft not fixing it. And it seemed like they would gaslight by saying it didn’t happen, or shouldn’t happen, or it is acceptable that it happened.
I expect that this new feature will suck so hard. I’m glad I rarely use windows these days.
by thyrox on 1/4/24, 12:28 PM
Thanks to perplexity it looks like they are adding a new key to the PC keyboard to open copilot. That's the summary I got.
by ceejayoz on 1/4/24, 12:27 PM
Well, that's one way to keep the branding teams from tinkering with the logo.
by LorenDB on 1/4/24, 12:39 PM
It sounds like they are putting fresh paint on the search key that some keyboards already have, whether in the function layer or as a standalone button.
by butz on 1/4/24, 4:27 PM
Probably Ctrl+Shift+Alt+Win+C was already taken, so all that's left was adding a new key to keyboard.
by asgeirn on 1/4/24, 12:40 PM
Wow. Betcha keyboards with the Official Copilot key®™© will cost plenty of extra.
by juancn on 1/4/24, 7:20 PM
They seem to be replacing the right CTRL key rather than adding a new one.
by TheRealDunkirk on 1/4/24, 1:26 PM
"You pass butter."
by ourmandave on 1/4/24, 1:23 PM
What's the Copilot shortcut on a Surface tablet?
by uxp8u61q on 1/4/24, 1:34 PM
Some people in this thread need to calm down. It's just a new icon for the "super"/windows key. Not a huge conspiracy.