Tag Archives: Microsoft

Microsoft Unveils Copilot+ PC With Generative AI Capabilities Baked In

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We’ve been hearing rumblings for moths now that Microsoft was working on so-called “AI-PCs.” At a pre-Billed event, the company spelled out its vision, Engadget reported.

Microsoft is calling its version of Copilot+ PCs, which CEO Satya Nadella described as a “new class of Windows PCs.” These contain hardware designed to handle more generative AI Copilot processes locally, rather than relying on the cloud. Doing so requires a chipset with a neural processing unit (NPU), and manufacturers such as Qualcommm have been laying the groundwork with chips like the Snapdragon X Elite.

Microsoft is taking a partner-first approach to making Copilot+ PCs. Along with chipmakers like AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm, major OEMs including Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP and Lenovo are on board. The first Copilot+ laptops are available to preorder today and they’ll ship on June 18.

Microsoft posted on its Official Microsoft Blog: Today, at a special event on our new Microsoft campus, we introduced the world to a new category of Windows PCs designed for AI, Copilot+ PCs.

Copilot+ PCs are the fastest, most intelligent Windows PCs ever built. With powerful new silicon capable of an incredible 40+ TOPS (trillion operations per second), all-day battery life and access to the most advanced AI models, Copilot+ PCs will enable you to do things you can’t really do on any other PC.

Easily find and remember what you have seen in your PC with Recall, generate and refine AI images in near real-time directly on the device using Cocreator, and bridge language barriers with Live Captions, translating audio from 40+ languages into English.

These experiences come to life on a set of thin, light and beautiful devices from Microsoft Surface and our OEM partners Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung, with pre-orders beginning today and availability starting on June 18. Starting at $999, Copilot+ PCs offer incredible value.

ArsTechnica reported Microsoft is using its new Surface launch and this week’s Build developer conference as a platform to launch its new “Copilot+” PCs initiative, which comes with specific hardware requirements that systems will need to meet to be eligible.

Copilot+ PCs will be able to handle some AI-accelerated workloads like chatbots and image generation locally instead of relying on the cloud, but new hardware will generally be required to run these workloads quickly and power efficiently,

At a minimum, systems will need 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, to accommodate both the memory requirements and the on-disk storage requirements needed for things like large language models (LLMs; even so-called “small language models” like Microsofts Phi-3, still use several billion parameters).

But the biggest new requirement, and the blocker for virtually ever Window’s PC in use today, will be for an integrated rural processing unit, or NPU. Microsoft requires an NPU with performance rated at 40 trillion operations per second (TOPS), a high-level performance figure that Microsoft, Qualcomm, Apple and others use for NPU performance comparisons.

Right now, that requirement can only be met by a single chip in the Windows PC ecosystem, one that isn’t even quite available yet.

In my opinion, some people will be very excited about the AI that has been “baked in” to Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC. That said, I think the $999 cost will be expensive to most PC users.

Microsoft’s New Xbox Mobile Gaming Store Is Launching In July

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Microsoft has been talking about plans for an Xbox mobile gaming store for a couple of years now, and the company plans to launch it in July. Speaking at the Bloomberg Technology Summit earlier today, Xbox president Sarah Bond revealed the launch date and how Microsoft is going to avoid Apple’s strict App Store rules, The Verge reported.

“We’re going to start by bringing our own first-party portfolio to [the Xbox mobile store], so you’re going to see games like Candy Crush show up in that experience, games like Minecraft” says Bond. “We’re going to start on the web, and we’re doing that because that really allows us to have it be an experience that’s accessible across all devices, all countries, no matter what and independent of the policies of closed ecosystems.

Although Bond alluded to games and an actual store in her statement during her interview at the Bloomberg Tech Summit, a statement provided to The Verge paints a slightly different picture. “This year we will debut our first mobile offering where mobile players can find deals on our firs mobile offering where mobile game players can find deals on their favorite in-game items and discover new games, starting on the web so players can access it anywhere,” Bond says, “This web-based store is the first step in our journey to building a trusted app store with its roots in gaming.”

The store will be focused on first-party mobile games from Microsoft’s various studios, which include huge hits like Call of Duty: Mobile, and Candy Crush Saga, Bond says. The company will extend this to partners at some point in the future, too.

TechCrunch reported reported that by launching the store on the web, as opposed to an app, Microsoft would present an alternative to Apple and Google, which charge a 30% fee on sales.

The official announcement comes as Microsoft has been talking about launching an Xbox mobile gaming store for quite some time now. Last December, Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said the company was in discussions with partners about launching an Xbox mobile store, and noted that it would arrive sooner than later.

Microsoft first hinted at a mobile store back in 2022 when it announced deal to acquire Activision Blizzard. Microsoft had said in filings that one of the major reasons it wanted to acquire Activision Blizzard was to build out its mobile gaming presence. In October 2022, Microsoft’s filings with the CMA revealed that it planned to create a new “Xbox Mobile Platform” that includes mobile games by Activision and King.

GameSpot reported reported Microsoft stated that it planned to launch a gaming storefront last year after the European Union’s Digital Markets Act made it easier for tech companies to start their own direct-to-consumer stores, eschewing Apple’s dominant “walled garden” approach. Bond said that the store will initially feature games from Microsoft-owned studios, such as Candy Crush Saga.

The storefront marks Microsoft’s latest attempt at entering the lucrative mobile gaming space, a market segment that Xbox is not usually associated with. The platform holder’s $69 million acquisition of Activision Blizzard helped set up this move, as the publisher includes Candy Crush developer King, one of the biggest players in the mobile space.

In my opinion, Microsoft is likely to attract players that might not have had access to Activision Blizzard King’s games. This could open a whole new world of mobile gaming for everyone.

New Microsoft AI Model May Challenge GPT-4 and Google Gemini

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For the first time since it invested more than $10 billion into OpenAI in exchange for the rights to reuse the startup’s AI models, Microsoft is training a new, in-house AI model large enough to compete with state-of-the-art models from Google, Anthropic and OpenAI itself, The Information reported. 

The new model, internally referred to as MAI-1, is being overseen by Mustafa Suleyman, the ex-Google AI leader who recently served as CEO for the AI startup Inflection before Microsoft hired the majority of the startups’s staff and paid $650 million for the right to its intellectual property in March.

But this is a Microsoft model, not one carried over from Inflection, although it may build on training data and other tech from the startup. It is separate from the models that Inflection previously released, according to two Microsoft employees with knowledge of the effort.

MAI-1 will be far larger than any of the smaller, open source models that Microsoft has previously trained, meaning it will require more computing power and training data and will therefore be more expensive, according to the people. MAI-1 will have roughly 500 billion parameters, or settings that can be adjusted to determine what models learn during training. 

By comparison, OpenAI’s GPT-4 has more than 1 trillion parameters, while smaller open source models released by firms like Meta Platforms and Mistral have 70 billion parameters.

ArsTechnica reported this marks the first time Microsoft has developed in-house AI model of this magnitude since investing over $10 billion in OpenAI for the rights to reuse the startup’s AI models. OpenAI’s GPT-4 powers not only ChatGPT but also Microsoft Copilot.

The development of MAI-1 is being led by Mustafa Suleyman, the former Google AI leader who recently served as CEO of the AI startup inflection before Microsoft acquired the majority of the startup’s staff and intellectual property for $650 million in March. Although MAI-1 may build on techniques brought over by former inflection staff, it is reportedly an entirely new large language model (LLM), as confirmed by two Microsoft employees familiar with the project.

With approximately 500 billion parameter, MAI-1 will be significantly larger than Microsoft’s previous open source models (such as Phi-3, which we covered last month), requiring more computing power and training data. This reportedly places MAI-1 in a similar league as OpenAI’s GPT-4, which is rumored to have over 1 trillion parameters (in a mixture-of-experts configuration) and well above smaller models like Meta and Minstrel’s 70 billion parameter models.

The Verge reported Microsoft’s head of communications Frank Shaw posted that “sometimes news is just a blinding flash of the obvious,” and linked to a longer statement on LinkedIn by CTO Kevin Scott. There, Scott says that Microsoft plans to keep working closely with OpenAI “well into the future” while continuing to train and release its own models.

In my opinion, there certainly seems to be a trend happening with big companies that are creating various AI models. It kind of feels like an “everyone else is doing it” situation.

600 Activision QA Workers Form A Union With Help From CWA

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Around 600 workers in Activision Publishing’s quality assurance department have formed a union. Assisted by the Communications Workers of America, the employees completed their vote with the results certified on Friday, March 8th. With that, Activision Quality Assurance United – CWA becomes the latest union to arise out of Microsoft’s gaming division and the largest video game union in the United States, The Verge reported.

According to The Verge, in 2022, Microsoft affirmed a labor neutrality agreement with the CWA which eases the organization process at the company and its subsidiaries including Activision Blizzard.

In an interview with The Verge, Tom Shelly, a technical requirements specialist and one of Activision Quality Assurance United’s organizers, said the labor neutrality agreement and Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard last year made their goals of unionizing easier to accomplish. 

In quality assurance, workers test game looking for bugs and other issues, flagging them for other developers to fix. Since the majority of QA jobs are typically entry level, the industry has a reputation for devaluing these roles, emphasizing the need for labor protections.

Polygon reported hundreds of Activision quality assurance workers are unionizing with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The union covers approximately 600 Activision central QA workers across three locations: Austin, Texas; Eden Prairie, Minn.; and El Segundo, Calif. This makes the union, called Activision Quality Assurance Unite – CWA, the largest group of unionized video game workers in the U.S.

The final vote is tallied at 390 votes “yes” and eight votes “no,” a CWA representative told Polygon.

Activision Quality Assurance United – CWA members work on games published by Activision Publishing, including franchises like Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot, and Tony Hawk Pro Skater. The group joined unionized Microsoft and Activision Blizzard employees at Blizzard Albany, Raven Software, and ZeniMax.

According to Polygon, the other positive is that neither Activision’s QA workers nor Microsoft management have to go through the union election process with the National Labor Relations Board, which can sometimes take a while. Instead, Activision QA workers have been voting since Feb. 22, with either a union authorization card (a document, physical or digital, indicating approval of the union) or a confidential vote through an online portal.

IGN provided a quote from CWA: “The CWA Labor Neutrality Agreement is a historic agreement and unprecedented at a tech company of Microsoft’s size. By recognizing our union, Microsoft is making good on its promise to respect our ability to decide for ourselves about union representation. We encountered no union-busting at a time when most US companies – especially tech companies – regularly spend millions on anti-union consultants to prevent workers from speaking up for themselves. We hope this will inspire other workers to form unions and raise industry-wide expectations for pay, benefits, and respect for workers’ rights.”

In my opinion, those who work for huge tech companies should be allowed to form a union. It is wonderful that Microsoft chose not to interfere with the unionization efforts of Activision’s QA workers.

Microsoft Fixes Edge Browser Bug That Was Stealing Chrome Tabs

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Microsoft has fixed an issue where its Edge browser was again misbehaving, this time by automatically importing browsing data and tabs from Chrome without consent, Tom Warren at The Verge reported.

He wrote: “I personally experienced the bug last month, after I rebooted my PC for a regular Windows update and Microsoft Edge automatically opened with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update.”

He asked Microsoft to explain why this behavior had occurred for himself and many other Windows users, but the company refused to comment. Microsoft has now quietly issued a fix in the latest Microsoft Edge update.

Here’s how Microsoft describes the fix:

“Edge has a feature that provides an option to import browser data on each launch from other browsers with user content. This feature state might not have been syncing and displaying correctly across multiple devices. This is fixed.”

The fix suggests that the setting for controlling the automatic import of browsing data wasn’t syncing and displaying correctly across devices. We’ve asked Microsoft for more clarity on the root cause of this issue, but we’re not holding our breaths for a response.

According to The Verge, Mozilla, the creator of the Firefox browser, recently commissioned a research paper “to investigate Microsoft’s tactics and the impact on consumers.” The paper explores Microsoft’s use of harmful design tactics that run contrary to the company’s own design guidelines, and can undermine competition from rival browsers.

These tactics include subtle ways to force Windows 11 users into Edge, ignoring the default browser if they clicked a link from the Windows Widgets panel or from search results. Microsoft also started forcing Outlook and Teams to open links in Edge last year, angering IT admins.

9to5Google reported that recently, Microsoft Edge was caught sneakily grabbing data from Google Chrome, and other browsers following Windows updates, but there was also an apparent glitch going on where Edge would grab data even if you didn’t give it permission. Now, that bug has supposedly been fixed.

For the past couple of years, Microsoft’s Chromium-based Edge browser has had support for pulling from other browsers (focused on Chrome) to keep Edge up to date if you used it. The feature has been pushed pretty aggressively as of late, with Windows updates showing a prompt that cannot be closed which tries to get your permission to do this.

However, for some, that update wasn’t the cause of Edge copying data from Chrome. A glitch within Edge would activate this feature for some users without their permission, which lead to a lot of confusion on how Edge was getting this data. In a recent changelog, for the latest stable version of Edge, Microsoft says (in a roundabout way) that the issue has been fixed.

Android Headlines reported that Microsoft’s past strategies include monthly Windows updates that automatically launch and pin Edge to the desktop and taskbar without user consent. Additionally prompts for polls occasionally appear to discourage users from downloading competing browsers like Chrome.

In my opinion, this situation was very likely not a “glitch”. There appears to be reason to think that Microsoft did this intentionally in an effort to discourage users from choosing the Chrome browser, instead of the Edge browser Microsoft clearly prefers them to use.

European Commission Closes Market Investigation on Microsoft’s and Apple’s Services

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The European Commission adopted decisions closing four market investigations that were launched on 5 September 2023 under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), finding that Apple and Microsoft should not be designated as gatekeepers for the following core platform services: Apple’s messaging service iMessage, Microsoft’s online search engine Bing, web browser Edge, and online advertising service Microsoft Advertising.

The decisions concluded the Commission’s investigations opened following the notification by Apple and Microsoft in July 2023 of the core platform services that met the quantitative thresholds. Among these notified services were also the four services concerned by today’s decision. Together with the notifications, Apple and Microsoft also submitted so-called “rebuttal” arguments, explaining why despite meeting the qualitative thresholds, these four core platform services should not, in their view, qualify as gateways.

In its decision of 5 September 2023, the Commission considered the rebuttal requests made by Apple and Microsoft deserved an in-depth analysis. Following a thorough assessment of all arguments, taking into account input by relevant stakeholders, and after hearing the Digital Markets Advisory Committee, the Commission found that iMessage, Bing, Edge, and Microsoft Advertising do not qualify as gatekeeper services.

The Commission will continue to monitor the developments on the market with respect to these services, should any substantial changes arise. The decisions do not affect in any way the designation of Apple and Microsoft as gatekeepers on 5 September 2023 as regards to their other platform services.

Engadget reported Apple’s blue bubbles are safe from interlopers for now. Following an investigation, European Union officials have determined that iMessage — along with Microsoft’s Bing, Edge, and Microsoft Advertising – don’t hold a dominant enough position in their respective markets to be subject to stricter regulation under the Digital Markets Act. Were iMessage to be brought under the DMA rules, Apple would need to make it interoperable with other messaging services.

The three Microsoft products and iMessage meet the qualitative thresholds for regulation under DMA. Apple and Microsoft easily clear the law’s revenue and market capitalization thresholds, while the four platform services in question have at least 45 million monthly active users in EU and north of 10,000 yearly active business users in the bloc.

While the EU won’t force iMessage to play nicely with other messaging services, Apple has creaked open the door to interoperability. The company has pledged to support the RCS messaging standard starting this year, meaning that messaging between iMessage and Android should be more secure and feature-rich. RCS texts will still be in green bubbles, however, rather than the blue of iMessage missives.

Overall, it appears that the EU’s decision that Apple and Microsoft are not gatekeepers is a good thing. It likely means that the EU is not going to enact harsh penalties on either company (at least, not right away).

Tech Layoffs Balloon in January As Wall Street Rally Lifts Tech Companies

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The S&P 500 is trading at a record and the Nasdaq is at its highest in two years, CNBC reported. Alphabet shares reached a new pinnacle on Thursday, as did Meta and Microsoft, which ran past $3 trillion in market cap. 

While Wall Street cheers on Silicon Valley, tech companies are downsizing at an accelerating clip So far in January, some 23,670 workers have been laid off from 85 tech companies, according to the website Layoffs.fyi.  That’s the most since March, when almost 38,000 people in the industry were shown the exits.

According to CNBC, activity picked up this week with SAP announcing job changes or layoffs for 8,000 employees and Microsoft cutting 1,900 positions in its gaming division. Additionally, high-valued fintech startup Bret laid off 20% of its staff and eBay slashed 1,000 jobs, or 9% of its full-time workforce. 

Earlier in the month, Google confirmed that it cut several hundred jobs across the company, and Amazon has eliminated hundreds of positions spanning its Prime Video and MGM Studios, Twitch and Audible divisions. Unity, said it’s cutting about 25% of its staff, and Discord, which offers a popular messaging service used by gamers, is shedding 17% of its workforce.

CNBC also reported that the swarm of activity comes ahead of barrage of tech earnings next week, when Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta and Microsoft are all scheduled to report quarterly results. Investors lauded the cost-cutting measures that companies put in place last year in response to rising inflation, interest rates hikes, recession concerns and a brutal market downturn in 2022. Even with an improving economic outlook, the thriftiness continues.

International Business Times reported that the industry’s pursuit for efficiency and cost-cutting measures is thoroughly connected to tech industry riding into artificial intelligence (AI) wave. 

Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, said 2023 was the “year of efficiency,” with a stock surge alongside 20,000 job cuts. The increasing demand for AI technologies has led some companies to strategically scale down headcount in non-profitable areas and relocate resources toward AI development.

According to International Business Times, tech execs are strategically crafting their downsizing messages emphasizing the need for focus and efficiency. Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer described the layoffs part of a larger “execution plan,” while Alphabet’s CEO Sundar Pichai focused on the importance of making tough decisions for meeting the ambitious goals. Amazon’s Audible CEO, Bob Carrigan, emphasized the necessity of becoming “leaner and more efficient”.

In my opinion, it is never a good idea to suddenly lay off employees with absolutely no warning.  Choosing to do layoffs of real humans, in favor of adding more artificial intelligence to take over their jobs, is a terrible decision. The “robots” should not be allowed to replace the livelihood of humans.