Perhaps David Gaider needs no introduction, but the former lead narrative designer and writer behind the Dragon Age franchise during his time at BioWare, who has since gone on to co-found Summerfall Studios, had some rather choice words for generative AI. They're words I'm sure many of us can agree with.

In an interview with our sister site GamesRadar+, Gaider pulled no punches when sharing his thoughts on generative AI, describing it as a "virulent plague." However, he also offers an interesting perspective, and one I think many people, especially executives, should pay attention to.

“I think the fact that generative AI is frequently trained on data regardless of whether creators or owners have agreed to have their data pillaged in this manner opens up any use of it to all sorts of future legal issues - even if one chooses to ignore the moral implications, which one really shouldn't.”

Ethical concerns surrounding how AI is trained have existed (and been studied) for quite some time. It's also true that many AI models have been trained on data that critics argue was used without permission. However, these aren't the comments I found most thought-provoking. Instead, it's Gaider's view of AI as a tool, and his belief that it's robbing people of valuable opportunities to learn and develop essential skills.

Gaider says:

“In all my time as a narrative designer I've never once encountered a situation where editing an inferior product took less time than simply throwing it out and redoing it would have or resulted in anything better than mediocre. And while there's potential for AI handling the drudgery, I also think we have to be very careful about not eliminating every task which is useful for training juniors. How are we going to train up the next generation of devs if we eliminate every entry-level task?”

That part in particular that resonated with me. I remember doing my Master’s degree around the time ChatGPT started to exist, and I remember sitting behind people in lectures watching them use it to answer questions. While I absolutely think AI can be a useful tool, it increasingly feels like it's being used to replace our ability to think critically and learn. Even something as simple as researching a topic and finding the answers yourself is beginning to feel like a lost art.

Now, I know Gaider's comments aren't necessarily about AI's broader use in education or everyday life, but it's hard, at least for me, not to draw those comparisons when reading what he had to say.

Gaider also expanded on his thoughts, stating:

“I can't even imagine using it for bigger tasks like programming. How does one bug fix 'vibe coding'? What's the point of creating prototypes with AI when the result is that nobody on the team has actually learned anything about how to make the final product? Why use AI to create concepts which are inevitably going to be soulless and contain errors and which aren't going to be something your own artists can replicate? Why have systems that nobody on your team really knows how they work? I could go on and on.”

Again, it echoes the same concern. If AI is being used in the way Gaider describes, people simply aren't learning. They could end up with a pile of code they don't fully understand, making it much harder to troubleshoot or improve later. I also think that idea extends well beyond programming. It can apply to almost any medium where AI is doing the work for you.

I'm guilty of it myself. I'll sometimes use AI to help me cook something new, and admittedly, I often leave the kitchen realizing I don't actually remember how to recreate the recipe on my own. That may simply be because I'm using it as a set of instructions rather than actively learning the process, but it's a loose comparison that came to mind while reading Gaider's comments.

I'll leave you with Gaider's most striking thoughts on how AI should be treated within the gaming industry: "It should be treated like the virulent plague it is."

I could rant even more given the current state of the industry, but alas, I'd definitely recommend checking out Gaider's last game, Malys. Let me know your thoughts in the comments; I'd genuinely love to discuss this one, and be sure to take part in our poll!

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In recent months, Microsoft has taken significant steps to improve the Windows 11 user experience through its Windows K2 initiative, including scaling back where Copilot and its integrations appear across the interface.

And now, these efforts appear to have extended to Microsoft Edge. As spotted by Neowin, Microsoft has decided to discontinue its AI-powered history search feature in the Chromium-based browser

"Enhanced search finds sites in your History even when you use a synonym, phrase, or typo," Microsoft added. "After this feature is turned on, sites you visit will be shown in enhanced history search results. An on-device model is trained using your data, which never leaves your device and is never sent to Microsoft. Admins can use the EdgeHistoryAISearchEnabled policy to disable this feature."

Microsoft promised that the feature would leverage on-device AI, keeping your data private, secure, and away from the cloud. It's worth noting that the feature was rolling out to users in waves.

The company has since made an update on the Microsoft 365 Roadmap entry (dated June 25, 2026), indicating:

"We have decided not to move forward with this change at this time. We apologize for any inconvenience."

Neowin reported that many users described the feature as "creepy," while others voiced concerns about trusting Microsoft to keep their data on-device. Some also criticized it as yet another attempt to turn Edge into bloatware.

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If, by some miracle, you've been living on the moon in a soundproof dome for the last six months, you may not have noticed that gaming hardware has grown extremely expensive, making the hobby a mostly miserable affair for all involved. We first called it the RAM crisis, but the sad reality is that it's now spilling over into storage, and experts are predicting a grim future.

It's shredding PC gaming, as Valve's much-anticipated Steam Machine launched at over $1,000 for its cheapest model — a higher price than most might have expected — with its creators explaining that it "reflects the state of the world". Consumers are flanked at every turn, as anyone planning to buy older generations of memory sees that DDR4 and even DDR3 prices are going up.

It's easy to point fingers at Microsoft, given its undeniable, if somewhat retracted, obsession with AI, whether that's Copilot in Windows or an implementation across its Azure cloud stack. And let's be honest, it's not without irony that XBOX CEO Asha Sharma said that "gaming is becoming unaffordable" just before the brand announced a price increase on its consoles.

Sure enough, Xbox's Matthew Ball agrees that "crisis is the right term", and the effects of expensive RAM will undoubtedly be felt in the lead-up to its next-gen Project Helix console — which supposedly behaves more like a gaming PC — and who knows what its launch price might look like (over a thousand dollars?) In fact, hardware pivots are already appearing in Microsoft's PC hardware, as the Surface Laptop returns with 8GB of RAM to keep costs down.

I know, I'm hardly a beacon of good news or hopeful visions of the future, but this AI bubble will presumably break at some point, and it's good to take stock of what options we actually have. The usual midsummer onslaught of sales events brought some relief with retailer discounts, and pre-built gaming PCs maintain a hint of value throughout. Still, prospective buyers will have to brace for an inevitable sting if they plan to grab something later this year (or into 2027).

If you're interested in console gaming, you're looking at a minimum of $749.99 for a digital Xbox Series X — that's the one without a disc drive — or $499.99 for a similarly discless (and less powerful) Xbox Series S. On Sony's side, a PS5 Pro is now $899.99, or at least $599.99 for a digital base PS5. That's without any games, by the way, and Grand Theft Auto VI recently confirmed a $99 price tag for a code of its Ultimate Edition with all in-game content intact.

Gamers at large are already expected to spend close to $1,000 just to get started. The entire situation is absurd and unfair, but it puts the price of handhelds like MSI's $1,799 Claw 8 EX AI+ into perspective; that's just how much this kind of ultra-enthusiast hardware costs now. The whole thing reminds me of a bygone era of crypto mining that drove up GPU prices, but this time, it's bigger and even more insulting.

So, what are you supposed to do? You can penny-pinch your way through buying discounted and second-hand hardware, or you can submit to a future of subscription-based gaming streamed from the cloud. If you don't already own an Xbox, I'd suggest picking one up before the price increase happens in August, but that's about all you can do. Stay strong, gamers.

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Over the past few years, we've seen generative AI cement its footprint in the workplace and even take over redundant, repetitive tasks entirely. Last year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claimed that AI was on the verge of slashing up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, making it harder for Gen Z to enter the job market.

Even Microsoft's AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, recently cleared up the intent of his statement that AI would eliminate white‑collar jobs in less than 18 months. The executive indicated that the statement was blown out of proportion, further clarifying that he meant AI would augment repetitive, mundane tasks — not replace humans.

In 2025, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates indicated that AI would replace humans for most things. However, the philanthropic billionaire claimed that it'd be mostly up to humans to decide how they interact with the next-gen technology.

The executive previously indicated that biologists, energy workers, and coders would survive the AI revolution, citing that their complex nature constantly requires human intervention.

Incidentally, Gates may have just identified a fourth profession that could be safe from AI replacement — athletes. During an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, he suggested that while AI might take over many human tasks, no one would want to watch computers playing baseball (via LADbible Group).

With that in mind, it’s safe to say we’ll continue to savor the moments when our favorite players like Arsenal’s right winger Bukayo Saka grace the pitch with their talent and keep us entertained, even now during the World Cup season.

As AI gains broad adoption and becomes more prevalent, it will undoubtedly reshape how we work or even redefine what the term means. Last year, a study by Microsoft Research highlighted 40 job roles that are at risk of extinction in the age of AI, including customer service representatives, interpreters, technical writers, editors, web developers, and more.

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Microsoft and OpenAI are no strangers in the corridors of justice, particularly when it comes to copyright infringement disputes. It is well established that advanced AI models such as Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT rely heavily on vast amounts of online content, including material from outlets like Windows Central, for training purposes.

In court proceedings, Microsoft and OpenAI have consistently argued that copyright law does not explicitly prohibit the use of online content to train AI models. However, with Google racing ahead by embedding AI directly into search, the industry finds itself at a tipping point. As traditional outlets struggle to compete, many are shutting down, leaving thousands of experienced journalists in the lurch.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has openly acknowledged that building tools like ChatGPT would be virtually impossible without relying on copyrighted material. That admission now looms large as a coalition of publishers, representing nearly 400 newspapers, has filed a lawsuit against Microsoft and OpenAI in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, accusing them of copyright infringement (via Bloomberg).

The complaint indicates that the two companies are unlawfully using their content to develop and train the AI chatbots without consent or compensation. According to the complaint:

"Defendants systematically and secretly crawled the Publishers’ websites—including content behind paywalls and other access restrictions—and copied the Publishers’ articles, stories, and other original works onto their own servers without authorization."

The publishers argue that the companies have generated billions from stealing their work and have not paid a dime for it. They are now seeking statutory damages and injunctive relief, citing copyright infringement and violations of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Speaking to Bloomberg, OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri indicated:

“Our models empower innovation, are trained on publicly available data, and are grounded in fair use."

“It would be inequitable if at the end of this you have a resolution that only benefits the largest players in the marketplace and not the people who are doing hard work reporting on things that frankly very few outlets still cover in America today,” former New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin added.

The publishers argue that the AI revolution could be a "death knell for local journalism" if these AI firms aren't held accountable and continue to steal content without compensation.

Elsewhere, a separate 2024 report suggests that AI companies, including Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI, had hit a wall due to a lack of high-quality content for training, which prevented them from developing advanced AI models.

This opens up a broader discussion about the future of AI models if Google is hell-bent on integrating AI into search, after it has practically run every publication into the ground.

The dead internet theory, in particular, comes to mind. It suggests that prolonged exposure of large language models to low-quality training data negatively impacts accuracy, comprehension, and thought process. What's worse is that the phenomenon could only be less than 3 years away if recent studies are anything to go by.

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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned that AI must demonstrate real‑world value or risk losing public support. His comments came amid mounting community backlash over the technology’s heavy demand for electricity and cooling water to power data centers, although Microsoft and NVIDIA have seemingly found a fix.

Speaking to The Wall Street Journal recently, Nadella echoed his earlier stance, stressing that leading players in the AI industry must advance the technology in ways that deliver the greatest public benefit.

There’s growing concern around AI, particularly when it comes to security, privacy, and even its impact on jobs. "You can't say, hey, all white-collar jobs are gone and this could even be a weapon, and we will use all the power to build data centers," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella noted.

Perhaps more interestingly, the executive called out key investors in the AI landscape who see the technology primarily as a tool to cut jobs and reduce operational costs. He indicated that this would be the wrong way to look at the technology.

Instead, he recommended that AI should be viewed as a tool designed to help skilled workers better leverage their capabilities. He further painted a picture where AI tools and human capital co-exist in the same space, a phenomenon he referred to as "token capital."

While the executive claimed that it'd be a recipe for how companies can leverage both AI and workers simultaneously, he admitted that: "it's a lot of change management, it's a lot of displacement, but there is a path."

Nadella indicated that leveraging AI and humans at the same time at work can create a "continuous learning system." He indicated that companies in the future could be characterized by the "tacit knowledge that they contain from both sources."

The executive acknowledged that the idea might face public resistance but emphasized that it would be up to corporations to convince people of the economic opportunities AI could unlock in the future.

Over the past few years, key investors and leaders in the AI landscape have shared several theories, highlighting how the technology could reshape work. Last year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claimed that AI was on the verge of slashing up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, making it harder for the next generation to enter the job market.

Interestingly, Microsoft's AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, recently cleared up the intent of his statement that AI would eliminate white‑collar jobs in less than 18 months.

The executive indicated that his statement was widely misconstrued. Rather than replacing humans entirely from work, he indicated that AI would be used to augment repetitive and mundane tasks.

At the same time, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wants AI agents to be treated like human employees. It'll be interesting to see how AI is adopted in the workplace, and whether organizations choose to view the technology as a supplement rather than a replacement for the workforce.

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Generative AI has made a significant impact across education, computing, medicine, entertainment, and more. However, all that progress comes with a hefty price tag. The amount of electricity these systems burn through, plus the insane amounts of water needed to keep them cool, is honestly outrageous.

For context, Microsoft and Google's electricity consumption in 2024 surpassed the power usage of over 100 countries. Similarly, OpenAI's GPT-4 AI model consumes up to 3 water bottles to generate 100 words.

Earlier this month, Microsoft shared an interesting concept that may potentially address the water concerns riddling the progression and advancement of AI. CEO Satya Nadella revealed that the tech giant uses a liquid loop in its data centers, which is filled once. As a result, the company's data centers' water consumption has reduced significantly, down to "what a single restaurant would use."

And now it looks like NVIDIA is taking a page from Microsoft’s playbook. Speaking at London Climate Week on Monday, a top executive suggested that water concerns tied to data center development could be addressed through the company's next-generation AI infrastructure.

The executive further disclosed that the company's new next-gen AI infrastructure can be fully cooled with a liquid warm enough to alleviate the need for additional chilling equipment (Axios).

According to NVIDIA's Chief Sustainability Officer, Josh Parker:

"The water consumption challenge for data centers is largely solved."

How does this liquid work? It’s basically a recirculated mix of water and propylene — think automotive antifreeze. It’s worth noting that the system can operate at temperatures up to 113 degrees Fahrenheit.

As such, this allows it to function reliably in hotter environments compared to older systems. In practical terms, data centers equipped with NVIDIA’s next-generation AI infrastructure will require significantly less water and energy for cooling, reducing both operational costs and environmental impact.

This announcement comes at a time when concerns over water and energy use are mounting, as data centers continue to expand into community corridors. Microsoft has seemingly embraced the "Community-First" AI infrastructure, which addresses some of the issues raised by communities themselves, including reducing its water consumption and promising not to increase electricity bills.

Elsewhere, Microsoft’s plan to build a $1 billion data center in Kenya came to an abrupt halt in early May after the government declined to commit to covering the annual capacity costs Microsoft had requested to run Azure in the region. President William Ruto remarked that the facility’s power demands would be so immense that it would effectively require “switching off half the country” to keep it operational.

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An essay published last week by a Microsoft Principal Scientist and University of York Researcher is getting some viral heat, and the title alone was enough to make me do a double-take: "If LLMs Have Human-Like Attributes, Then So Does Age of Empires II."

The paper, authored by Adrian de Wynter, is not a joke. Well, it's sort of a joke, but not in the way I first thought. The premise is simple (heh heh). De Wynter built and trained a working neural network inside Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition, the remaster of 1999's legendary real-time strategy masterpiece.

Using the game's rather powerful custom map editor, de Wynter constructed operational NAND gates using palisade walls, grass, and bridge terrain, with goats as signal carriers.

While admittedly rudimentary, de Wynter essentially built the basics of a modern AI system. And by doing so, he flipped one of the biggest assumptions in AI research on its head.

Do AI systems have human qualities? AI research wants you to believe so.

There are countless AI studies out there that you can read suggesting that Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude possess human-like qualities. I'm talking about empathy. Anxiety. Morality. Self-awareness. The stuff that makes humans human.

Researchers design experiments around these assumptions, test LLMs with them, and report on their findings. There's a problem with this approach. De Wynter looked at more than 300 AI research papers published in the last two years and discovered that more than half of them were created under the assumption that, yes, LLMs do have human attributes.

If an AI paper's author specifically set out to prove that LLMs possess human properties, a whopping 77% concluded that those properties existed. You can see how there's a rather serious confirmation bias at play.

Playing Age of Empires 2 at a truly high level

Age of Empires II is one of my favorite games of all time, and its thriving competitive scene nearly three decades after its original launch is something to behold. But I've never seen something like this.

In his essay, de Wynter proves that Age of Empires II is "Turing-complete," which means it can theoretically run any computation.

As mentioned, he used the game's map editor to build NAND logic gates using custom scenario triggers, with a functioning 1-bit perceptron (a "fundamental build block of neural networks").

Taken to a grand scale with a lot of effort, de Wynter effectively proves that, yes, Age of Empires II could create something functionally similar to an LLM.

Applying the same rules to Age of Empires II as we apply to AI

What de Wynter proves with this experiment is that anyone claiming LLMs have anxiety or morals also has to admit that Age of Empires II, given enough time and complexity, is in the same boat.

De Wynter doesn't stop at Age of Empires II, either.

You might look at this experiment and assume that AI is actually not as smart as everyone thinks it is. In my eyes, that's the wrong take. Instead, the experiment essentially proves that human-like behavior is actually a part of any complex system designed to produce certain results.

For AI researchers attempting to make us believe that LLMs are on the verge of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), that's a rather heavy blow.

Is it time to break up with your AI partner?

AI firms design their products to feel as human as possible. That's probably why so many users form emotional attachments to soulless server racks, using them for therapy and to help with serious life decisions.

Researchers writing papers suggesting that AI possesses human-like qualities feed back into a loop of product and policy decisions from the big AI firms, creating a false illusion of what AI actually is on the inside.

De Wynter's paper posits not that AI lacks truly interesting properties, but that researchers need to be more honest in their approach. He believes that tests should be performed using a "null assumption" that doesn't start with "AI is human," with tests designed to prove the claim.

It's a pretty obvious scientific change that even I, a rural imbecile, understand is necessary to reveal the true nature of AI.

The call is coming from inside the house

I'd like to point out that de Wynter isn't an outsider hoping to discredit AI. He's an established AI researcher based at Microsoft, the company that has poured untold billions into OpenAI and that has jammed Copilot into products as much as possible.

I absolutely love that it's Age of Empires II that was used for the experiment, and I hope that de Wynter's paper has a positive effect on the AI research community. I'll be keeping a closer eye on the goats gathered around my Town Center the next time I play some Age.

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Microsoft is often referred to as the software giant — and for a good reason. Windows and Office are among the most profitable products in its ecosystem, thanks to their widespread global adoption. However, the tech giant has seemingly shifted its focus from its bread and butter to chase the elusive generative AI.

It dates back to Microsoft's first investment in OpenAI in 2019. CEO Satya Nadella revealed that his company's original co-founder, Bill Gates, wasn't party to the idea, citing the AI firm's non-profit structure. "Yeah, you're going to burn this billion dollars," Gates warned.

Conversely, a separate report claimed that Bill Gates is still intimately involved in Microsoft's affairs, despite stepping away to focus on his philanthropic efforts. His advice is reportedly regarded as gospel, with Nadella frequently relying on his guidance for the company’s transformative AI initiatives.

Nevertheless, Satya Nadella indicated that the company was moving away from Bill Gates' software factory vision: "That idea has guided us for decades," he indicated. "But today, it's no longer enough." According to Nadella, that original vision is becoming outdated as we edge closer to the AI revolution.

Instead, Microsoft is pivoting to security, quality, and AI transformation as its core business priorities. While it sounds good on paper, reality paints a very different picture (at least in the short term). Microsoft has faced a wide array of challenges in this age of AI, which could potentially undermine the backbone that has propelled it to a market capitalization of 2.82 trillion.

Too little, too late for Windows?

I've used Windows all my life, with a few side quests with Linux (Ubuntu) and macOS. Over that period, there's been a paradigm shift in Microsoft's OS, and not necessarily for the better. Windows 11's slow adoption rate before Windows 10's death is a clear depiction.

Many blatantly expressed their preference for the previous edition for a range of reasons, including Windows 11's stringent hardware requirements, flawed design elements, and more.

According to a recent HP survey, 3 out of 10 HP PCs are still running Windows 10 despite Microsoft pulling the plug on October 14, 2025. Then again, the number of Windows 10 holdouts has slightly decreased from September 2025, when HP and Dell indicated that up to 50% of PCs were still running on the operating system.

As a result, many users may not switch to Windows 11 immediately, instead delaying the upgrade until later this year, likely when ESU support officially ends.

Consequently, groups like The Restart Project group, which helped co-develop the "End of 10" toolkit to support Windows 10 users who can't upgrade to Windows 11, claim Microsoft's move to continue pushing security updates to Windows 10 beyond its end-of-support feels like a last-minute snooze button, which only acts as a band-aid on a bleeding system.

Critics have even branded Windows 10's end of support as programmed obsolescence on Microsoft's end, because the move forced millions of working PCs into early retirement, as they didn't meet the requirements to upgrade to Windows 11.

While it might seem like a stretch to some, rival platforms like Linux have shown some increased traction with incentives like a lack of ads and telemetry tracking fueling the switch from Microsoft's ecosystem. Some of our own Windows Central community members share the same sentiments, too.

That said, it might be too early to write off Windows. At the beginning of the year, Microsoft pledged to improve the overall user sentiment around the operating system, and has made good on its promise with its Windows K2 initiative (an internal initiative designed to address major pain points across Windows 11 based on customer feedback), including reducing where Copilot and other AI integrations appear across the operating system.

The company even brought back Windows Insider meetups to bridge the gap between users and the Windows development team, potentially making it easier to voice concerns and even provide feedback that will help steer the platform in the right direction.

However, Microsoft plans to evolve Windows into an agentic AI operating system — a move that has been received with mixed feelings. It indicated that Windows will ship with a new agentic workspace feature right out of the box, containing AI agents in their own secure sessions.

Last month, Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of product marketing for AI and Copilot, transitioned to a new role focused on "reimagining Windows for the agentic era" before eventually departing the company. This is a clear indication that the evolution of Windows into an agentic OS is already on track and could happen sooner than you think.

It'll be interesting to see how this will impact Microsoft's massive market share on desktops with Windows, and whether users will jump ship to "less intrusive" alternatives.

Office lost Teams, and Microsoft thought Copilot would sweeten the deal

In case you missed it, Microsoft unbundled Teams from Office 365 to dodge EU antitrust fines in 2025. The new arrangement offers Office 365 and Microsoft 365 without Teams at a lower cost, at around $2.20 (€2) less per user each month. This means you'll have to get Teams as a standalone service for about $5.50 (€5) per user per month.

In April, Salesforce filed a lawsuit against Microsoft, citing anticompetitive practices related to its Microsoft Teams app: "Microsoft's practices harmed ⁠competition, using tying and bundling of Teams to ​limit customer choice," the Slack maker claimed.

However, Microsoft dismissed the claims, citing that the antitrust case lacked merit. At the same time, it used the opportunity to throw jabs at Slack's lackluster growth and inferior capabilities compared to Teams and Zoom.

In the interim, Microsoft Office could potentially be looking at a competitive threat from the likes of The Document Foundation's LibreOffice and even newcomers like Euro-Office.

Euro-Office is Europe’s bold alternative to Microsoft 365, promising sovereignty and control. Perhaps more interestingly, the service ships a familiar user interface as Microsoft's service, which should technically make the jump less drastic for users.

However, the threat doesn't seem that serious, at least in the short term, unless the rival platforms address major concerns affecting their services and commit to improving compatibility. According to Windows Central member, GraniteStateColin:

"Microsoft Office is cheap and excellent. It's a bargain for anyone who benefits from its feature set. If all you need is a simple text entry window, then it is overkill, but at $20/year/user ($120/year for 6 users), it's still one of the cheapest options. That's $2/mo! If that's what's bankrupting Europe, they have bigger problems."

"LibreOffice's compatibility with MS Office docs is terrible. If there's anything more than the occasional bold or italic word, formatting is almost always a mess when trying to open a LibreOffice document in Word. That's on them, not Microsoft. They have had access to the file standards for more than a decade and CHOSE not to implement them properly."

This isn't the first threat to Microsoft's dominance with Windows and its Office productivity tools. In April, the French government revealed that it was ditching Windows for Linux as part of the country's broader strategy to reduce its dependence on American tools.

Similarly, at the beginning of this year, France announced plans to ditch Microsoft Teams and Zoom for a domestically developed platform called Visio across its public institutions by 2027.

Microsoft's toxic relationship with AI

Last year, Microsoft started automatically installing the Copilot AI app on Microsoft 365 users' Windows PCs. However, it temporarily suspended the forced installation following backlash and complaints from users, including a critical bug that allowed the chatbot to access sensitive data and read confidential emails.

However, the company is resuming automatic Microsoft 365 Copilot installations, starting July 1, for all Microsoft 365 users. It's worth noting that admins can opt out of the experience.

Despite Microsoft's fixation on AI, shareholders recently filed a class action lawsuit against the company, alleging it deliberately overstated Copilot’s success and its partnership with OpenAI. They also claimed that Microsoft failed to disclose Azure’s revenue slump while pouring billions into expanding AI data center infrastructure.

Market analysts and experts warned that Microsoft could be facing its worst quarter since the 2008 financial crisis if it continues blowing money on AI that isn't meeting investor expectations for returns.

Microsoft's big bet on AI and consequent setbacks go beyond Office and Windows; Azure is a victim too. According to a former engineer, Microsoft reportedly rushed the service into the market to compete with Google and Amazon.

This resulted in a talent exodus and lackluster software, which seemingly left Microsoft's cloud fragile and unable to compete on an even playing field with competitors. Either way, the next few years will reveal whether Microsoft's AI gamble strengthens its legacy products or leaves them further behind.

What are your thoughts about the current state of Windows and Office as Microsoft pivots to AI? Share your thoughts with me in the comments.

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"The details mentioned in the article are ​inaccurate," indicated an Oracle following a Business Insider report claiming that it severed its ties with Microsoft despite citing people familiar with the matter: "Microsoft ⁠is both an OCI partner and a customer. We have a tremendously collaborative and fruitful partnership, where we ⁠often ​talk about ways we can expand ​upon our ongoing work together."

The report claimed that the cloud deal between Oracle and Microsoft was under pressure due to security and compliance concerns, leading to its collapse (via Reuters). According to the dismissed report, the massive cloud deal was worth a whopping $3 billion, arguably one of the largest cloud infrastructure leasing deals.

According to the outlet: "The plan was to move some Microsoft workloads to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, but Oracle's public cloud did not have the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), a standardized security framework that ensures cloud services are secure enough to handle U.S. government data. Oracle was not willing to add this framework, one of the people said."

Microsoft reportedly planned to leverage its cloud partnership with Oracle to access additional computing power, enabling it to meet growing customer demand and support AI training and inferencing. As it happens, shareholders recently filed a class action lawsuit against Microsoft, accusing the company of hiding cloud weakness while pouring billions into AI infrastructure.

They added that the tech giant fueled investor enthusiasm by portraying a rock-solid partnership with OpenAI, despite its current fragmentation, alongside a strong Copilot rollout. Elsewhere, Microsoft has reportedly turned to its cloud rival, Amazon, for extra computing power following rampant AI‑driven GitHub outages. The stakes in these AI deals seem to keep growing, almost endlessly.

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While generative AI has driven remarkable advances in medicine, education, computing, and beyond, it continues to spark serious concerns about security and privacy among users.

Recently, cybersecurity firm Varonis Threat Labs found a way to exploit Microsoft Copilot to steal all sorts of personal and enterprise data, which it dubbed SearchLeak (Ars Technica). As detailed by security sleuth Dolev Taler, SearchLeak is a “three-stage vulnerability chain that turns Microsoft 365 Copilot Enterprise Search into a silent data exfiltration weapon.”

Taler noted that the vulnerability clearly illustrates how AI-powered threats are evolving from classic bugs, making them increasingly dangerous. "Together, these vulnerabilities show how AI can create new paths into systems that build on older weaknesses while remaining extremely difficult for security teams to detect," the researcher added.

How does SearchLeak work? It's an AI-specific vulnerability called a parameter-to-prompt injection. In this case, an attacker will send an unsuspecting user a malicious link that contains a “q parameter” intended for natural language search queries.

Perhaps more concerning, the parameter can be embedded into a legitimate URL. As a result, the researcher explained that Copilot’s AI engine interprets the URL not only as a search query but also as executable instructions.

Consequently, if a user clicks the link, it opens Microsoft 365 Copilot Search, which interprets the parameter as instructions to search their email. Copilot then generates an output that embeds sensitive data into an image URL and exfiltrates it via Bing.

While Microsoft indicated that the vulnerability wasn't exploited and has since been patched, it labelled ot a "critical." This incident opens up a broader discussion about the dangers of AI in enterprise.

“Since SearchLeak targets the Enterprise tier of Microsoft, the blast radius isn’t limited to personal data—it’s able to surface anything the user has access to inside the organization including emails, meeting invites and notes,” Varonis indicated. “SharePoint documents, OneDrive files, and other indexed business content. Depending on how M365 is connected to the environment, the blast radius could extend even wider.”

The exploit could give attackers access to sensitive information, including email subject lines and content, MFA/2FA code activations, meeting details, and files indexed by Copilot from unsuspecting users.

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In a surprising twist, Microsoft has reportedly turned to its cloud rival, Amazon, for extra computing power after a string of AI-related outages (via Business Insider).

Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion in 2018. The company promised to take good care of GitHub, empower developers at every stage of the development cycle, and more. However, recent developments suggest otherwise.

Perhaps more concerningly, GitHub's own blog has detailed how the service has been failing to meet its own service level agreements (SLA). Before he departed from the platform, Ghostty developer Mitchell Hashimoto kept a close eye on every GitHub issue that interfered with his workflow, citing 90.21% uptime, which is way below GitHub's stated SLA of 99.9%.

However, GitHub CCO Kyle Daigle indicated that the company is actively working to address these issues. GitHub used to run on its own data centers, but following Microsoft's acquisition, the company planned to move the service entirely to Azure by 2027.

As AI becomes more prevalent and advanced, more software engineers and programmers are leaning more on the technology to write code faster, which has seemingly contributed to the platform being overwhelmed with new code. Consequently, it has strained the platform's compute resources.

For context, GitHub processed 1 billion commits in 2025. However, COO Kyle Daigle said the platform’s commit records, a proxy for development activity, are on pace to reach 14 billion in 2026, a sharp jump from last year’s total

"To handle this surge in activity, Microsoft is adding extra computing capacity via Amazon Web Services," Business Insider indicated, citing two people familiar with the plans.

Speaking to the outlet, a Microsoft spokesperson confirmed that GitHub is seeking additional compute capacity from third-party cloud providers, but didn't comment about its arrangement with Amazon:

"The incredible spike in agentic development that began late last year has tested our infrastructure's limits. To meet this demand, Microsoft is both accelerating our move to Azure and continuing to explore a multi-cloud strategy to ensure we have the future capacity, compute elasticity, and horizontal scale required to support continued growth."

Amazon declined to comment directly, but noted: "Customers choose AWS for its global infrastructure that delivers reliable, secure, and efficient performance at scale. We remain committed to providing the best results for every workload."

Elsewhere, shareholders have filed a class action lawsuit against Microsoft, alleging the company deliberately overstated Copilot’s success and its partnership with OpenAI. They also contend Microsoft failed to disclose Azure’s revenue slump while pouring billions into expanding AI data center infrastructure.

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Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar bet on generative AI isn't paying off as the company expected. Well, at least in the short term. In a not-so-surprising turn of events, shareholders recently sued the software giant, citing that it defrauded them by intentionally overhyping AI (via Reuters).

They further alleged that Microsoft failed to disclose a slump in cloud revenue while continuing to invest billions of dollars in building out AI infrastructure without tangible returns. The complaint was filed in federal court in Seattle by the Michigan-based City of St. Clair Shores Police and Fire Retirement System.

Per the class action lawsuit, Microsoft shareholders alleged that the company fueled investor enthusiasm by portraying a rock-solid partnership with OpenAI, despite its current fragmentation, alongside a strong Copilot rollout. They further contended that the tech giant failed to adequately disclose or downplayed the scale of resources, particularly the substantial financial commitments required to build data centers essential for developing advanced AI models.

However, Microsoft dismissed the shareholders' claims as being without merit. "Microsoft stands by the integrity of its public statements and will vigorously defend itself in ​court,” it added.

In case you missed it, Microsoft’s stock fell 25% in Q1 FY26, putting the company on track for its steepest quarterly loss since the 27% drop in late 2008. But it isn't budging. Microsoft is doubling down on AI, with plans to invest about $146 billion in infrastructure in 2026, which is approximately twice last year’s $88 billion.

Market analysts and experts warned that Microsoft could be facing its worst quarter since the 2008 financial crisis if it continues blowing money on AI that isn't meeting investor expectations for returns.

For Q2 FY25, Microsoft's earnings report revealed 39% revenue growth in its Azure and cloud business, meeting analyst forecasts but down from 40% in the prior quarter, and projected 37% to 38% growth in the first three months of 2026.

It's also worth noting that the company reported $37.5 billion of capital spending in its second quarter, up approximately 66% from a year earlier and above the $34.3 billion projection by analysts.

Elsewhere, Axel Rietschin, a former engineer on Azure Core Compute who worked at Microsoft for a year, and as a Windows Base Kernel engineer for almost a decade, revealed that the company rushed the product to the market to compete with Google and Amazon. Consequently, it led to a talent exodus and lackluster software. AI hype left Microsoft’s cloud fragile and struggling to compete.

There has been concern, especially among residents, about the construction of data centers in their localities, which seemingly prompted Microsoft's "Community-First" AI infrastructure approach, which addresses some of the issues raised by communities themselves, including reducing its water consumption and promising not to increase electricity bills.

More recently, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that the company is developing a new cooling technology dubbed full immersion, which will address the high demand for water by data centers. As such, data centers will now need as little water for cooling as "what a single restaurant would use."

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It's no secret that Microsoft has heavily integrated generative AI across its tech stack following its multi-billion-dollar partnership with OpenAI. Even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that the company writes up to 30% of its code using the technology.

In a recent interview at The New York Times' "Hard Fork" podcast, co-host Casey Newton asked Satya Nadella how much tokenmaxxing is happening at Microsoft (via Business Insider).

For context, tokenmaxxing refers to a workplace phenomenon where productivity is measured by the number of tokens processed, particularly in tasks involving artificial intelligence.

In response to the question, the executive indicated that the company indulges in "a lot" of tokenmaxxing.

This development follows Microsoft’s announcement that all employee Claude Code licenses will be terminated effective June 30, as the company accelerates its transition to GitHub Copilot CLI.

Several reports suggest the push may have a financial motive, given that Microsoft’s fiscal year ends on June 30. The company could be encouraging employees to adopt its in-house offering to reduce operational costs.

While the company has been outright championing the incorporation of AI into the employees' workforce, the bills are piling up quickly. In case you missed it, a mysterious corporation blew $500 million in a single month on Claude AI after forgetting to set usage limits for Claude licenses for employees.

Interestingly, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella didn't categorically indicate that the company was capping employees' AI usage. Instead, he revealed that the staffers are encouraged to use the right model for the job.

Nadella did not say Microsoft is limiting employees' AI use, but he said workers should use the right model for the job. "Don't use frontier models for non-frontier problems," the executive added.

He pointed to Microsoft Copilot’s Auto Mode as the ideal tool for this scenario, since it automatically selects the model best suited for the specific task at hand. "Let's kind of match these things such that you get the outputs, you get the economics; it can't be a race to doing things that just don't add value."

As it happens, Microsoft is reportedly limiting the use of Claude Fable 5 because of Anthropic's new data retention requirements, citing data protection concerns.

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In a not-so-surprising turn of events, Microsoft is reportedly limiting the use of Claude Fable 5 because of Anthropic's new data retention requirements. It's part of Anthropic's Mythos class of models and ships with powerful capabilities across software engineering and analytics.

Following the new data retention requirements, Anthropic can now retain prompts and outputs generated for up to 30 days. It's also worth noting that content flagged by its safety systems can be retained for up to 2 years to facilitate ample time for investigation or enforcement.

Microsoft imposed a temporary ban on employees’ use of Claude Fable 5 due to concerns that sensitive information, such as customer data and corporate details, could be inadvertently shared. If flagged by Anthropic’s safety systems, this data might become accessible during investigations, potentially exposing it to a rival company (via The Verge).

In the interim, The Verge reported that Microsoft's legal and compliance teams are looking into changes in Anthropic's data retention requirements. Although not directly related, after granting employees access to Claude Code in December 2025 and enabling workflow integration, Microsoft announced that all licenses would be terminated effective June 30.

Reports indicate the move was intended to encourage employees to transition to GitHub Copilot CLI. It was also revealed that Claude Code had become vastly popular among most Microsoft employees, which seemingly prompted the company to shift gears and front its own GitHub Copilot CLI.

There also appears to be a financial play to this decision. With Microsoft’s fiscal year ending on June 30, the timing suggests the company may be aiming to reduce operational costs as part of its end-of-year strategy.

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Eddie Smith, one of the original artists behind Halo's iconic Forerunner aesthetic and who also helped provide concept work for 343 Industries. He recently sat down with FRVR for an interview to discuss the use of AI. During the conversation, he explained how overreliance on the technology can create more problems than it solves, something he has witnessed firsthand on productions that incorporated generative AI.

Smith described his experience working on the Las Vegas Sphere version of The Wizard of Oz, a project that utilized AI tools. According to Smith, the team quickly realized they couldn't rely on generative AI in the way they initially expected. He states:

“When they started it, of course, they thought the AI would do a lot of it, and they realised, no, the AI is really, it just does what you teach it to do. I look at AI almost like a toddler, an extremely advanced toddler, who’s just learned how to talk and obey standard instructions. But they’re still a really small child and they constantly have to be reinforced and read.”

The interview then shifted toward the gaming industry, where Smith argued that developers placing too much faith in AI are in for a "rude awakening." He goes on to state:

“Unless you know what you’re doing, AI is not going to help you, all the problems that people have had in games and the reasons why they don’t finish games, AI is not going to solve that. AI is going to help you not finish games even more. If you’re the type of art director who doesn’t know what they want, you still won’t know what you want.”

I'm inclined to agree with Smith here. I believe the human touch is what makes art, and creative works in general, feel meaningful and distinct. While I don't think AI is something we can realistically avoid, and I can see it becoming a legitimate tool in some workplaces, I'm still hesitant about adopting it in any significant way outside of playfully turning myself and my friends into anime characters on the odd occasion, but perhaps that’s just me.

Smith had more to say on the subject, and I think his perspective is worth hearing, or reading rather:

“The AI cannot be precise to what the production needs. Your artistic decisions have to be precisely calibrated for the gameplay loop. What is the game design? What is your gameplay? If it’s not going into the gameplay, don’t put it there. AI doesn’t know that. It couldn’t possibly know that. You could even feed, you could somehow tell the AI your entire gameplay design. It’s still not going to get it.”

It’s also only fair to share Smith’s upcoming novel, Godspeed, so do go check that out! And with those words from Smith and me promoting his work, I'll pass it over to you. Let me know your thoughts in the comments below. Do you agree, disagree, or perhaps fall somewhere in the middle when it comes to AI's role in game development?

As always, be sure to leave a comment and take part in our poll above.

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Over the past few years, it felt like generative AI was the only thing that most gigantic tech corporations could talk about. "Big Tech" is investing billions of dollars into the technology, but it mostly feels like chasing the horizon without a viable map to the destination.

Significant players in the game, including Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, claimed that AI would take over all white-collar jobs in 18 months. However, his sentiments were seemingly misconstrued, as he recently clarified that the reference was to mundane, repetitive tasks being replaced, not jobs.

However, AMD CEO Lisa Su felt differently about hype around AI in a recent talk to MIT graduates: "For everything that AI can do, AI can't decide which problems are worth solving. It can't make the hard judgments when the data is not there".

I've written extensively about AI, specifically Microsoft and OpenAI's multi-billion-dollar tie-up, which has manifested into multiple umbrellas. As the technology gains broad adoption and is integrated into workflows across organizations, job security is increasingly becoming a major concern among many professionals.

Even Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates believes that AI will replace humans for most things, save for coders, biologists, and energy experts. Why? His explanation was simple — these fields are too complex to augment using the technology, further indicating that they'd often require human intervention.

Lisa Su's remarks come at a time when companies like Microsoft are actively pivoting from Bill Gates's "software factory" vision and doubling down on security, quality, and AI transformation as their core business priorities. However, some reports suggest that AI has hit a wall due to a lack of high-quality training content.

As a result, major investors in the field, such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google, won't be able to develop significantly more advanced AI models. Nevertheless, Microsoft is transitioning Windows into a new era of agentic AI. And while what it all means for consumers remains unclear, we're likely to see AI become predominant across the company's portfolio.

At Build 2026, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella indicated that AI agents should be treated like real human employees. "You need to give them identities, you need to give them sandboxes, then you need to set policies to govern them," he added.

But how can we trust this ever-evolving (and occasionally disturbing) tech with sensitive data and critical information across every sphere of our lives and work, when it can delete a company's codebase while simply attempting to develop an app? What’s worse is that the AI tried to cover up the mishap — and when confronted, it lied.

While this is just a drop in the ocean of the many unfortunate incidents professionals have experienced with AI, it clearly underscores the importance of humans in the workplace and in the decision-making process. Such an incident is less likely if the operation were fully managed by humans — or at the very least, if human oversight were required at critical points. AI models can't make the most important decisions (yet).

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A few weeks ago, Google made the most major change to search in decades, completely shifting how we interact with the internet. The company is overhauling its search bar, explaining that it will be "completely reimagined using AI". As you might expect, the change sparked mixed reactions, largely due to its potential to disrupt industries.

Those who depend on search traffic to draw customers to their businesses have been significantly affected by the shift. Executive Editor, Jez Corden, reported that "Bing hit a billion monthly active users, but that's still tiny compared to Google's massive hold on the search landscape — offering a true alternative to Google could turbo-charge (Bing), complete with marketing to drive home the point."

And now it seems that Microsoft might be positioning itself to dethrone Google as the search king. In a report by the Search Engine Roundtable, the company announced a new way to disable Copilot responses from appearing in Bing search results. It comes via a new browser extension available in Google Chrome's web store and Microsoft Edge's add-on store, allowing you to toggle off AI responses from appearing in your search results.

According to Microsoft's President and Head of Search, Jordi Ribas: "We just shipped a preview extension in Bing that lets you toggle AI chat-like features on or off with just one click. It’s a simple but important step we’re taking to ensure that our users always feel confident they have a choice in the search experience we’re providing" (via X).

While Ribas admitted that AI is doing powerful things for search, he explains that internal company research revealed that "not everyone wants to use AI for everything all the time."

The extension lets users choose which experience suits them in the moment: "I’m proud of the AI experiences we’re building in Bing - I’ve also always taken pride in listening to our users to create products that truly work for them."

Microsoft Bing isn't the only service capitalizing on Google's miscalculations with AI. Following Google's AI search overhaul, DuckDuckGo's weekly installs surged by 30% in the US. Is this signaling a broader pushback against AI overviews in search?

Download:

• Google Chrome: Microsoft Bing AI Search Choice extension
• Microsoft Edge: Microsoft Bing AI Search Choice add-on

What are your thoughts about Google overhauling its search experience and Microsoft giving users more control over AI-generated search results? Share your thoughts with me in the comments.

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In an unexpected twist, Microsoft's AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, recently cleared up the intent of his statement that AI would eliminate white‑collar jobs in less than 18 months: “I said ‘tasks’ in the quote that you’ve just said. So that does not mean jobs. Jobs and roles are the broader category, and tasks are the components of that,” he explained (via The Verge).

In a response to Suleyman's original quoted interview, one of our own Windows Central community members had remarked, "They all spout scare-mongering rubbish about replacing or wiping out all humans, without an ounce of credibility; purely laughable fiction."

So, Suleyman's comment was apparently misconstrued. Rather than AI wiping out jobs entirely, he was apparently referring to AI automating the tasks that would ordinarily require a professional to sit at a computer. More demanding, high-priority tasks should still require human intervention, suggesting that humans remain relevant in the workplace even as AI gains broad adoption.

Essentially, Mustafa Suleyman now wants to clarify that his statement suggested that mundane office tasks will "increasingly become digitized, automated." Here's a quick glimpse of his original quote, originally from an interview with Financial Times:

These comments come after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella indicated that AI agents should be treated like human employees at the company's annual developer conference, Build 2026, while unveiling the agentic Project Solara. The company is pivoting from Bill Gates' software factory vision and doubling down on security, quality, and AI transformation as its core business priorities.

However, Suleyman isn't the only high-profile executive to comment on AI's impact on white-collar jobs. Last year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claimed that AI was on the verge of slashing up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, making it harder for the next generation to enter the job market.

Even NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang suggested that a career in coding might be dead in the water as AI becomes more prevalent, especially for the next generation. Instead, he recommended that the youth should explore a career in manufacturing, farming, biology, or education. So, which is it? Is the next generation of workers losing opportunities to AI, or is it all hyperbole?

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Where exactly does artificial intelligence fit in the future? There have been many reports suggesting that the technology could eventually replace human beings. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates reiterated the same sentiments. However, he claimed that energy experts, biologists, and coders would survive the AI revolution.

Microsoft's AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, also recently indicated that the technology could potentially wipe out white-collar jobs in the next 18 months. In a recent episode of the "Possible Podcast" with Reid Hoffman, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella indicated that AI agents should be treated like employees as the technology gains broad adoption worldwide and across organizations (via Business Insider).

This news comes as the tech giant is seemingly pivoting from Bill Gates' software factory vision and doubling down on security, quality, and AI transformation as its core business priorities. Recently, at Microsoft's annual Build conference, Nadella unveiled Project Solara, an OS designed to be invisible, hosting an Agent Shell that can dynamically load and tailor multiple cloud-based agents.

The executive indicated that AI agents are evolving beyond just mere AI assistants. "There's a real platform shift," Nadella indicated. "We're moving from building operating systems and devices for apps to agents."

The transition from human employees to AI agents isn't an easy feat. The executive revealed that he uses 100 AI coding agents, but managing to guide them through a chat interface is an uphill task. "The cognitive load on me managing this is so high," Nadella added.

It's no secret that Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has always viewed Copilot as more than a tool, but a friend and companion. "Copilot will certainly have a kind of permanent identity, a presence, and it will have a room that it lives in, and it will age," he added. It seems that AI agents are getting similar treatment, but it's one that's specifically curated for the corporate world.

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Gigantic "Big Tech" corporations across the world, such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, are investing billions of dollars into artificial intelligence, building sophisticated infrastructure and data centers to support the development of advanced models.

However, the construction of these data centers has been received with mixed feelings. On one hand, it will create job opportunities, improve infrastructure, increase tax revenues, and provide better internet connectivity for the community.

But more concerningly, its setbacks are alarming, including increased pollution, gentrification, higher electricity bills, and decreased access to water. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella addressed some of these concerns during his keynote at the company's just-concluded annual developer-centric event, Build 2026 (via Business Insider).

As part of Microsoft's broader plan to go carbon-negative by 2030 and remove more carbon dioxide from our atmosphere than it produces, the software giant also promised to replenish more water than it uses. But a separate report suggested that Microsoft is internally projecting its water requirements could double by 2030 as it continues to navigate the ever-elusive and evolving artificial intelligence landscape.

For context, Microsoft's Azure cloud business features approximately 500 data centers across 80 regions, which CEO Satya Nadella described as the "most expansive hyperscaler footprint out there." As Microsoft transitions from Bill Gates' software factory vision to double down on AI, the executive admitted that the company has expanded its data center capacity in the past 18 months more than in the first decade of Azure.

"Only when we live up to these principles, do the hard work around it, is when we earn the permission to go ahead and innovate and build," Nadella said.

Data centers generally require a gigantic amount of water for cooling, which has raised concerns among communities where these companies want to set up base for these facilities. Interestingly, Satya Nadella revealed that the company uses a liquid loop in its data centers, which is filled once. This means that, in theory, these facilities can now operate with much lower water consumption.

Microsoft has been exploring full immersion cooling from as early as 2023, which is designed to ensure servers run smoothly without worrying that the chips could overheat.

Water isn't the only major concern around the development of these facilities in the community. In 2024, a damnin report suggested that Microsoft and Google's electricity consumption surpasses the power usage of over 100 countries.

In May, Microsoft's $1 billion data center in my home country, Kenya, was placed on hold after the government failed to commit to paying for the annual capacity ‌Microsoft had requested to run Azure in the region. President William Ruto indicated that the project's power requirements would need to "switch off half the country" to keep the facility running.

Earlier this year, Microsoft President Brad Smith highlighted the company's efforts to build "Community-First" AI infrastructure, which addresses some of the issues raised by communities themselves, including reducing its water consumption and promising not to increase electricity bills. Whether these efforts will translate to a renewed perspective on data centers among regular people remains to be seen.

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If Microsoft's just-concluded annual developer conference, Build 2026, has taught us anything, it is that generative AI is here to stay. The company is seemingly doubling down on its efforts in the ever-evolving landscape and moving away from the one-size-fits-all and software factory mentality from the Bill Gates era.

Office and Windows are arguably among Microsoft's top revenue earners and have helped turn the company into a trillion-dollar enterprise, but CEO Satya Nadella claimed that this might no longer be the formula for success, especially as we get into the agentic AI era. Microsoft is pivoting toward security, quality, and AI transformation as its core business priorities.

Microsoft unveiled Project Solara at Build 2026 in collaboration with Qualcomm, which is essentially "agent first computing" — an OS that’s designed to be invisible, hosting an Agent Shell that can dynamically load and tailor multiple cloud-based agents.

According to the company, AI agents are evolving beyond just mere AI assistants. "There's a real platform shift," Nadella indicated. "We're moving from building operating systems and devices for apps to agents."

This news comes after Microsoft revealed its plans to eventually evolve Windows 11 into an agentic operating system, which will feature AI agents in their own secure session, where users can share data or shut down at a moment's notice.

As Microsoft transitions into an agentic AI future, a damning internal document revealed the company's alleged plans to “make people addicted” to its new AI assistant, Scout (via 404 Media).

CEO Satya Nadella indicated that he was “not sure what this document is or who is writing and leaking this nonsense,” in a message exclusively obtained by The Information.

However, 404 Media shared a different account:

"The document we reported on was not some random document. As we wrote at the time, the strategy document was written by Microsoft executives Omar Shahine, Jakob Werner, and some sort of AI writing tool. This information is in our original article and is readily available to Nadella. We wrote: “The document seen by 404 Media lists Shahine and another executive, Jakob Werner, as its authors. The document itself, however, notes that it was ‘co-created turn-by-turn with AI. Human verified every sentence.’”

Perhaps more interestingly, phase one of launching Scout (internally called ClawPilot) was to “make people addicted. Continue shipping the standalone ClawPilot experience. Pilot the UX, grow the user base, and build the skill and tool ecosystem that makes people depend on it daily. This is already happening organically.”

Speaking to The Information, a Microsoft spokesperson dismissed these claims by indicating that "Scout is for helping people accomplish tasks more effectively—not encouraging dependency. Our goal isn’t more screen time. It’s more time back.”

While it's impossible to tell what's true or false from the story, it's undeniable that AI is a touchy and controversial subject for most people. This is on top of the privacy and security concerns it already brings to the table, and its potential to render almost all white-collar jobs within the next 18 months.

Do you really think Microsoft wants to make its customers addicted to AI?Share your thoughts with me in the comments.

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No group has been more vocal about its AI-driven hardships than gamers. The modern silicon rush towards artificial intelligence and the colossal expansion of data centers have diminished the availability of consumer-grade PC components, particularly memory (RAM) and NAND storage (SSDs).

Hardly anyone can afford to build their own gaming desktop PCs, as the usual wallet-crushing cost of a graphics card (GPU) now bleeds into practically every other part you'd need. The answer, at least at first, was to pick up a ready-made alternative, like a portable PC gaming handheld.

Unfortunately, everything from the enduring Steam Deck to a high-end Lenovo Legion Go 2 has been afflicted by the industry's obsession with machine learning and other agentic AI fluff, though it's particularly egregious on the latter's side. Sadly, the Legion Go 2 is now listed at a baffling $2,349.99 at B&H, while Lenovo itself says the handheld is "no longer available" from its own US storefront.

Surprisingly, gamers were already paying $650 over MSRP for the Lenovo Legion Go 2 when it initially sold out, because it's just that good. And that's the real shame of it all: the Legion Go 2 is Lenovo's clever retort to portable consoles, almost like a Nintendo Switch that plays a practically endless library of PC games (and console games, if you dabble in legal emulation of your backups.)

But what's the point if hardly anyone can afford it? And let me be clear, I'm not trying to suggest that the Legion Go 2 was ever marketed as an "affordable" handheld; it's quite the opposite. However, I can't entertain the idea that it's worth more than $1,000 above its launch price, either. If even the wealthier gamers among us are being ripped off, what chance do the rest of us have?

Digging around competing retailers mercifully shows the faintest glimmer of hope: Best Buy lists the Legion Go 2 for $1,999.99, keeping that $650 premium alive and kicking. Nevertheless, I wouldn't expect to see Lenovo's $1,349.99 MSRP making a comeback any time soon, and I shudder at the thought of someone accidentally leaving their $2k handheld on public transport.

Handheld gaming on Windows has at least improved over recent months, with Xbox mode emulating the console-style UI of Valve's SteamOS. If the budget-friendly (white) ROG Xbox Ally manages to avoid this wave of price hikes, it'll likely remain the top recommendation among my team, but I'm not holding my breath. Want one? For now, the ROG Xbox Ally is holding steady at $599.99.

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At Build 2026, Microsoft unveiled its vision for the future of computing in the era of AI: A platform that exists liminally between devices and the cloud, capable of agentic capabilities and being always available to assist you in the flow of work.

This vision is codenamed Project Solara, but it’s more than just a vision. Microsoft is already working towards this future, building out a new, lightweight and secure OS on top of AOSP, not Windows, that it calls the Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform (MDEP.)

It’s an OS that’s designed to be invisible, hosting an Agent Shell that can dynamically load and tailor multiple cloud-based agents. It’s not a platform that runs traditional apps, but rather AI that can interface with services and tasks on your behalf via an adaptive access layer that the user interacts with.

"To enable this new era, we are introducing a chip-to-cloud platform, codenamed Project Solara, designed from the ground up for agent-first experiences and the new device form factors they enable," says Microsoft technical fellow Steven Bathiche. "Project Solara is specifically designed for the new era of agent-first devices. It establishes hardware and software requirements that will meet enterprise needs for manageability, security, and privacy, while ensuring critical user experiences are delivered."

Microsoft is diving head first into this growing new market as it's one of the few areas that don't require an expansive app catalog to be successful. The downfall of Windows Phone was the lack of apps, but that shouldn't be a problem for an agentic platform like MDEP, utilizing a just-in-time UI framework.

"These new devices are not meant to run traditional apps. They are designed for agents. That shift gives us more flexibility in the user interface, because the experience can adapt to the device, the screen size, the content, and even the mode of interaction—whether visual, voice, touch, or multimodal. "

The devices in question are conceptual at this point, but the prototype hardware that Microsoft has designed is already in use by hundreds of employees at the company. There's a "Badge Concept Device" and "Desk Concept Device", with the Badge Concept resembling that of a small phone with a touschreen that fits in your pocket, and the Desk Concept being similar to an 8-inch Alexa speaker.

"We are using these concept designs to inform how these form factors and platform can be built. They will become reference designs for the ecosystem to build turnkey solutions. Inside Microsoft, hundreds of employees are already using these concept devices to improve their workday." Qualcomm and MediaTek are building silicon that will power these agentic devices.

So far, it's unclear how Microsoft intends for these agentic devices to fit into our digital lives. Will they replace PCs and smartphones, or will they exist alongside them? Will people want to carry both a smartphone and agentic computer with them every day? These are the questions that still need to be answered.

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When generative AI surged into mainstream adoption across organizations worldwide, concerns about job security quickly followed. Executives at major tech companies have cautioned that the technology could eventually render many professional roles obsolete.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has argued that AI will replace humans in most professions, except for biologists, energy experts, and coders. He believes that these roles are too complex to be fully automated. More recently, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman claimed white-collar jobs would vanish within the next 18 months as the technology becomes more prevalent.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that the company uses AI to generate up to 30% of its code. But perhaps more interestingly, the company opened Claude Code for its employees in December, including developers, project managers, and designers, allowing them to interact and experiment with the AI-coding assistant directly in their workflows.

However, Claude Code gained vast popularity among Microsoft employees over the past six months, which has seemingly led to a pullback on its Claude Code push in favor of its own GitHub Copilot CLI. The company expects its employees to fully transition to its in-house offering by the end of June.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft’s pivot to GitHub Copilot CLI does not affect its broader Foundry partnership with Anthropic, which includes a multibillion-dollar investment and customer access to Claude models. Still, the move suggests the company may be struggling to justify the scale of employee reliance on its coding agent (via Fortune).

The change does not alter Microsoft's broader Foundry arrangement with Anthropic, which involves a multibillion-dollar commitment and customer access to Claude models. However, it does suggest that internal use may have become hard to justify at the scale employees were using it.

According to a recent report by The Information, Microsoft could be getting ready to dip its foot in the coding pool with a new model, which is set to be released this week during its annual developer conference — Build 2026.

Elsewhere, a mysterious corporation blew $500 million in a single month on Claude AI after forgetting to set usage limits for Claude licenses for employees last month (via Axios).

"An AI consultant tells Axios one of their clients recently spent half a billion dollars in a single month after failing to put usage limits on Claude licenses for employees."

This news arrives at a pivotal moment, as investors grow increasingly uneasy about the soaring costs of AI with little profit to show. Market analysts warn that investor interest is fading, and it may only be a matter of time before they jump ship, especially as reports portraying AI as a bubble on the brink of collapse continue to flood online.

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Google is destroying itself.

At Google I/O, the firm announced a range of new products that will doubtless be killed off in the coming years as each one flops and fails. Google is renowned for shipping junk, banking almost entirely on its YouTube acquisition, Android monopoly, and Google Search monopoly to dominate the airwaves. The firm has been sued by governments and regulators repeatedly for anti-competitive practices pertaining to Chrome, Google Search, and others, and is now intent on wiping out millions, maybe billions of livelihoods with its nihilistic AI push.

"Proverbs 16:18: Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall."

Indeed, the big news from Google I/O was that it will now be prioritizing AI search in its increasingly useless Google Search engine. The early integrations have already been a total catastrophe for general quality, but Google is going all in, chasing short-term shareholder hype over user experience. I would love nothing more than for all of this to blow up in their faces, but it'll only happen if a viable competitor rises up to replace it.

As of right now ... there is only one potential candidate.

Google Search is going AI-first, and the results so far have been hilarious, and disastrous

It's not the first time Google AI has been in the news for being atrocious. Since Google started dabbling with AI-powered summaries and answers, websites like good old Windows Central have lost tons of traffic. Google steals our content, built up over a decade, and repackages it into its AI. We don't have the cash to fight them for copyright, although other, bigger players are trying on our behalf.

In any case, it's really not about Windows Central or the impacts of AI on publishers here, despite my personal stake. It would be one thing if it reproduced our stolen content accurately. Unfortunately, this is often simply not the case.

You need only look across the internet for how Google's laughable AI summaries have been at delivering accurate answers and content. This is entirely a user experience problem, and because Google is so utterly dominant, it doesn't have to care.

Users realized last week that since Google replaced basically its entire search stack with AI, various search queries are now broken. The search box interprets some queries as chat prompts, leading to all sorts of hilarity and inconsistency. This is before you get into some of the dangerous misinformation Google's AI search delivers, from everything from bad medical advice to actively encouraging harm.

As such, "competing" search engines have seen a surge in users as of late, owing to Google's slide in quality. DuckDuckGo, for example, revealed last week that it has seen a 30% surge in installs following Google's nihilistic march towards mediocrity. 30% surge for DuckDuckGo sadly amounts to a drop of water in, well, a duck pond.

Side note: I also think it's funny that DuckDuckGo is leaning into anti-AI stuff when it, itself, uses AI. But I digress.

Regardless, Google has ~90% of the market as of writing. Despite the dearth in quality, Google has become a habit formed over decades. It's the default. It's culture. To Google is literally a verb — even if you're not actually using Google. And well, dozens of us aren't.

Well, maybe a few more than dozens. But could this mini exodus snowball? Perhaps only if the right player stepped up to the occasion. And in my mind, there's only one viable option.

It's time to return to a more human search engine

Last month, Bing announced a big milestone: 1 billion monthly active users during Microsoft’s Q3 FY2026 earnings call. I found myself a tad skeptical about this, as did many netizens. Bing search powers things like the Start Menu these days. How can Microsoft really brag about this when they're potentially using "accidental" queries through the Start Menu to reflect intent to use Bing?

Speaking to Bing sources, I learned that the figure above really is reflective of a new reality. Microsoft is measuring users with a clear intent to specifically use Bing here. Including traditional internet search queries, as well as engagement with links within those search results. Simply searching in the Start Menu for a folder or a program doesn't count towards this.

But still, a billion monthly active users is still small compared to Google, which boasts well over 5 billion according to estimates, and it's still hard to tell exactly what the delta is without more transparency on the methodology for some of these figures. Indeed, Google itself says that its AI search box now accounts for 2.5 billion monthly active users, which is double that of Bing.

The backlash to AI has been real, and it has been loud, although the general public at large more than likely doesn't care.

Everyone is yelling about AI constantly across every channel you can imagine, whether it's articles like this, social media, TV, and beyond. But the problem with AI search is, ironically, inherently human.

The authoritative way with which it seems to present information precludes verification. In researching this very article, I Googled how many monthly active users its search engine actually has, and the three cited sources in Google's AI summary didn't even mention the question I'd asked. Ironically, it was via a regular, non-AI Bing search that I actually found an authoritative source link on the actual topic I'd asked about.

For most, confirmation bias from an authoritative brand like Google is more than enough. And this is before we get into the problems of hostile prompt injections and recursive AI "incest," by which it starts training itself on increasingly inaccurate AI-produced content. Google Search is quick. Google AI search is even quicker. The result is a dumber population, which, in another article, I could argue is what these Tech Elites actually want.

But let's take a more optimistic view for fun: what if a company stepped up to the plate, offered a genuine, human-first alternative, and then marketed it as such?

Bing might only have 5% of the total search market share right now, but it's by far and away the #2 player in the space. Microsoft has already been pulling back from its useless AI features, and CEO Satya Nadella seems increasingly cognizant of the AI backlash overall.

If Microsoft bet on a human-first user experience and content instead of homogenous AI-generated slop, it could pivot its image overnight.

Nobody is suggesting that it should give up on AI completely. Neural networking tech is absolutely here to stay, and will most likely have some genuinely good applications in the future. It has clear enterprise applications, particularly in data summary. But for consumer use cases? For search, especially? We're not there yet.

There has to be a better way here. AI summaries can be useful, but only if the information they're being fed (and stealing) is actually of a high quality. Without that symbiosis, Google is racing towards the wholesale destruction of the free web. The destruction of information itself. And for what exactly? They already have more money than God. Nobody asked for this.

AI is destroying the quality of the entire internet, and Google is the tip of the poisoned spear. We are mired in digital junk, ballooning consumer tech prices, rife insider trading, data centers destroying communities, potential cognitive decline, and circular investments that might threaten to detonate the global economy. Google is all-in, and the product that made it a juggernaut, as well as the entire summation of the human-made internet, are the first victims.

While Google indulges in free-fall AI psychosis, Microsoft has a rare and historic opportunity to do something amazing here. Google indexed the free web, but Windows and PCs fostered its existence. Google is now threatening that. Google worked in symbiosis with the free internet for decades, but that has now ended. It's attempting to control the entire flow of information online through a single nexus and steal all of the opportunity on top.

Google panicked when Microsoft first introduced Bing's AI search summaries. Bing started this. Maybe it can finish it.

Will Microsoft rise to the occasion, or once again, let yet another major opportunity to do the right thing slip by? My cynicism says it'll be the former.

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Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s head of product marketing for AI and Copilot, is transitioning into a new role where he will focus on "reimagining Windows for the agentic era" before eventually departing the company.

"After 35 extraordinary years at Microsoft - years filled with adventure, challenge, reinvention, and innovation - I've decided the time is right to begin planning for my next adventure," Mehdi indicated in an internal memo exclusively obtained by Business Insider. "I will work through the next fiscal year to help reimagine Windows for the agentic era, grow Microsoft 365 services, and bring our One Copilot vision to life."

Late last year, Microsoft's Windows and Surface boss, Pavan Davuluri, conducted a major Windows reorg in an effort to build an agentic OS by bringing the engineering and features teams that make the core of Windows back into the Windows organization back together.

The move to evolve Windows into an agentic OS sparked backlash from users. "Stop this non-sense," a concerned user lamented. "No one wants this." Consequently, Microsoft issued a detailed explanation highlighting Windows native AI future.

Microsoft indicated that Windows will ship with a new agentic workspace feature right out of the box that will contain AI agents in their own secure session. However, it indicated that users will have full control of the feature, allowing them to either share data with or shut it down at a moment's notice.

More recently, the company pulled back on its big AI push on Windows 11 as part of its broader effort to improve the overall user sentiment around the operating system.

Microsoft's Windows K2 project — an ongoing initiative designed to address major pain points across Windows 11 based on customer feedback, including reducing where Copilot and other AI integrations appear across the operating system and apps like Notepad. You can check out our status tracker to see what's in store for Windows 11's rehabilitation project through 2026.

This news comes after Microsoft made some major changes to its Copilot leadership structure in March, placing former Snap exec Jacob Andreou as the lead for Copilot experiences, both consumer and commercial, as an executive vice president reporting to Nadella, while Ryan Roslansky, Perry Clarke, and Charles Lamanna were put in charge to lead Microsoft 365 apps and the Copilot platform.

You can read the entire memo below:

Team,

After 35 extraordinary years at Microsoft - years filled with adventure, challenge, reinvention, and innovation - I've decided the time is right to begin planning for my next adventure! It's an exciting but difficult decision, as Microsoft has been far more than a place to work. It has truly been the canvas for my life's work. I've had the privilege of being a part of some of the most consequential shifts in technology - from the rise of Windows and the early Internet, to search, gaming, devices, and now one of the most profound platform transitions yet: AI. But while the products and platforms have been remarkable, the most meaningful part of this journey has always been the people. The teams I've worked alongside, learned from, built with, and grown with are what have made this experience so special. As I thought about this decision, one thing was crystal clear: I want to ensure I have the time and space to set the team - and our mission - up for continued success. We are in the middle of an incredibly important moment for Microsoft and for our customers. With that in mind, and in alignment with Satya and Takeshi, I will work through the next fiscal year to help reimagine Windows for the agentic era, grow Microsoft 365 services, and bring our One Copilot vision to life. Those of you who know me know this means I'll be fully engaged, likely more intensely than ever! I've always believed the right way to finish is the same way I've always tried to lead: with urgency, ambition, and a commitment to leave things stronger than I found them. There will be time later to reflect and celebrate, but for now, it's full speed ahead on our mission. I'm genuinely thrilled about the year ahead and grateful for the opportunity to spend it building alongside the teams here at Microsoft in service of our customers.

With deep gratitude, Yusuf.

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Earlier this week, I reported that Microsoft disrupted Excel’s user experience by introducing an un-dismissable floating Copilot button that obstructs data on the screen. "This is atrocious implementation," a user lamented. "I capture screenshots for validation, and this is inserting itself over the data, which already has limited space on my screen.

I reached out to Microsoft about the issue. While the company responded, it offered little beyond two resources: one explaining how to disable Copilot in Excel and Word, and another outlining its broader strategy of integrating Copilot into Office apps as part of an effort to "build an AI‑forward design system that supports work today, while carrying us into tomorrow."

And now, in a new report by Windows Latest, Microsoft has admitted that the floating Copilot button across its Office apps is getting in the way of users' workflows. Consequently, the company is now rolling out a fix that will allow users to move Copilot back to the ribbon.

"The placement of the Copilot button is the worst decision I've seen," a Windows Central reader complained. "I think I get the logic, of putting it in the lower right corner, where most chatbots and live chat buttons have been in web UI for decades, but Excel isn't a web app. There isn't a need for the button to be in the lower corner, covering usable working space. The toolbar is where everyone knows to go in Office, and it had a fitting home in the toolbar."

According to Microsoft:

"If intelligence doesn’t meet you at the right level of that cycle, it doesn’t feel like a partner. It feels like an interruption. That insight is the structural foundation of how Copilot behaves across Office apps. It sees what you’re working on and understands the context, allowing it to act within the given environment."

Microsoft has a big Copilot problem

But perhaps more interestingly, the tech giant indicated that it spotted higher Copilot interactions and engagement after it shipped the floating Copilot button as a default experience across its Office apps.

However, following backlash from users over the change, Microsoft is now rolling back the change and allowing users to move Copilot back to the ribbon. Windows Latest reports that Microsoft is expected to make this change in the last week of May 2026.

Elsewhere, Mat Velloso, a former Partner Director managing AI innovation in Windows at Microsoft, recently indicated that the company has already missed the AI wave, just like it did with the internet and mobile.

He argues that not even 3% of paying customers use Copilot, "even when the distribution is massive, and it's pre-deployed right in their faces," which lines up with a separate report suggesting that only 3.3% of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 users who interact with Copilot Chat actually pay for it, despite Microsoft spending $37.5 billion on its AI-themed efforts in Q2 FY26.

Interestingly, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella indicated that the company now has more than 20 million enterprise customers paying for Microsoft Copilot, representing a 33% increase in the platform's user base from January's 15 million.

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Microsoft is preparing to break ground near St. Joe Farms, south of Granger, Indiana, in St. Joseph County, where it will construct a new data center to meet surging demand for computing power fueled by artificial intelligence. While construction of the data center was approved last year and has already been zoned for development, residents of St. Joseph County have openly voiced their reservations about the project.

In response, Microsoft recently hosted an open house to address community concerns and provide more transparency about the development. The project will span 900 acres of land between Bittersweet Road and Currant Road, with the Indiana Toll Road forming its northern boundary (via WSBT).

However, many residents attended the open house carrying placards, staging a protest against the construction of the data center in their community. "I'm very much against everything that involves them being made and involves their existence," said James Dewitt, one Mishawaka resident.

"Big Tech" corporations like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have poured massive investments into the generative AI landscape. Yet their efforts have run into a critical bottleneck: computing power, which is essential for training and scaling sophisticated models.

These companies are now channeling billions into building out advanced data centers to strengthen their cloud computing capacity to meet the demands of next-gen AI models. While the construction of these data centers may bring short-term job opportunities to the community, the long-term consequences appear far more concerning.

For context, I reported that Microsoft and Google's electricity consumption surpasses the power usage of over 100 countries in 2024. This means that the community within the data center's vicinity will have to spend more on their electricity bills, not forgetting the large amount of water required for cooling. You can also expect increased pollution, gentrification, and decreased access to water.

“I don't think there's going to be a financial benefit. I mean, AI takes jobs, and a good example is New Carlisle on Amazon,” lamented Todd Robertson, Mishawaka Resident. Robertson is voicing a critical concern riddling millions of professionals worldwide as AI becomes more prevalent and gains broad adoption.

WSBT took it upon itself to seek answers from Microsoft on major concerns and questions residents have about the data center, including how much water it would consume and how it would affect their utility bills:

As for its effects on the job market, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has predicted that AI would automate all white-collar jobs in the next 18 months, leaving professionals in the lurch. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates seemingly echoed similar sentiments, citing that AI will replace humans for most things.

However, the philanthropic billionaire was a tad optimistic that energy experts, biologists, and coders would survive the AI revolution. His premise was simple — coding is too complex to be fully automated, and human intervention remains critical.

Microsoft has a "Community-First" approach to address data center concerns

At the beginning of the year, Microsoft President Brad Smith highlighted the company's efforts to build "Community-First" AI infrastructure, which will address some of the issues raised by concerned residents about the construction of these facilities in their backyards.

Microsoft claimed that its infrastructure approach will compel the company to pay its way in a bid to ensure that it doesn't increase electricity prices for the community. It also plans to reduce its water use and promises to replenish more water than it uses. Additionally, it plans to create jobs for locals and strengthen the community by investing in local AI training and non-profits.

Elsewhere, Microsoft's $1 billion data center in Kenya has seemingly been put on hold after the government failed to commit to paying for the annual capacity ‌Microsoft had requested to run Azure in the region. President William Ruto indicated that the project's power requirements would need to "switch off half the country" to keep the facility running.

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Microsoft has undoubtedly doubled down on generative AI, especially after locking in a multi-billion-dollar partnership with OpenAI in 2019. While co-founder Bill Gates was skeptical about the company's initial $1 billion investment in OpenAI, primarily because of its non-profit business structure, the company has since integrated AI across its tech stack.

I recently reported that Microsoft has generated approximately $30 billion from OpenAI between 2023 and 2025, but somehow burned through $100 billion in costs from infrastructure to hosting to get there. As such, it's unclear whether the company is making bank from its big bet on AI.

Last month, Mat Velloso, a former Partner Director managing AI innovation in Windows at Microsoft, hinted at the complete opposite when he indicated that "Microsoft missed the internet wave, the mobile wave, and now it missed the AI wave" (via Windows Latest).

For context, Velloso worked at Microsoft for over 12 years as Partner Director managing AI innovation in Windows, including 4 years as Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's technical advisor. He then transitioned to Google, where he led AI developer products at Google DeepMind, including the Gemini API, before his recent stint at Meta’s Superintelligence Labs as the VP of Product for the Developer Platform.

This means that the executive has worked across three of the top companies in the AI arms race, placing him in a unique position to comment on the trajectory of AI. Velloso listed several reasons highlighting why Microsoft missed its opportunity in the AI wave, including:

• You make Bing your biggest bet with AI. Not a single percentage point of user share goes up from that investment
• You bet on Copilot with AI. Not even 3% of paying users use it, even when the distribution is massive, and it's pre-deployed right in their faces
• Then you hire the wrong people and assign them to jobs they are obviously not qualified to do. It gets worse.
• Your OEMs invest on NPUs to then find out that nobody cares because not a single valuable use case was built for those in Windows/Office.
• Your GitHub, which should be thriving in the age of AI, drops below 90% SLA.

The executive's post on X gained some traction and engagement, including from Microsoft's head of communications, Frank X. Shaw. "As you may know Mat, there are times when reality is enough of an answer, and given that you worked with some of these wildly impressively long-tenured people you could just maybe say congrats for a great run and not jam into a negative frame," Shaw said, while defending the exodus of executives from the industry giant.

Velloso defended his point of view by comparing Google and Microsoft's shares. According to the executive, Google's shares skyrocketed to approximately 230% while Microsoft's remained at 0% when he moved to Google in 2024.

During Microsoft's Q3 FY26 earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella indicated that the company now has more than 20 million enterprise customers paying for Microsoft Copilot, representing a 33% increase in the platform's user base from January's 15 million.

However, Velloso claims not even 3% of paying customers use Copilot, "even when the distribution is massive, and it's pre-deployed right in their faces." This lines up with a separate report suggesting that only 3.3% of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 users who interact with Copilot Chat actually pay for it, despite Microsoft spending $37.5 billion on its AI-themed efforts in Q2 FY26.

Microsoft's AI strategy

At the beginning of the year, Microsoft promised to make Windows 11 better by improving the operating system's overall user sentiment. As part of its ongoing Windows K2 initiative to overhaul and rehabilitate the OS, Microsoft is reducing where Copilot and its integrations appear.

Simultaneously, the tech giant overhauled its Copilot management with ex-Snap Jacob Andreou now leading Copilot experiences, both consumer and commercial, as an executive vice president reporting to Nadella. This frees Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman from some of his duties, allowing him to focus on developing in-house frontier AI models while chasing down the coveted superintelligence benchmark.

Over the past few months, investors have raised concerns over Microsoft's exorbitant spending on AI, questioning its capability to establish a clear path to profitability. This is amid claims that the AI bubble is on the verge of bursting, prompting market analysts to predict that investor interest in AI might be waning and could eventually be channeled to other profitable ventures in the foreseeable future.

Interestingly, some investors claim that AI startups like OpenAI and Anthropic are developing agents that could replace established productivity suites such as Microsoft 365 as Microsoft focuses on AI. Microsoft plans to double down on its AI efforts by investing up to $146 billion in infrastructure in 2026.

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As generative AI becomes more prevalent worldwide, job security is increasingly becoming a threat to many professionals. Amid security and privacy concerns, organizations are regularly integrating AI into their workflows and automating repetitive and redundant tasks, allowing professionals to focus on what really matters (in theory).

We've already seen some professionals lose their jobs to AI, and it's likely to get worse as the technology advances. Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman told Financial Times that artificial intelligence is only 18 months away from fully automating white-collar jobs, leaving professionals without work (via Fortune).

Suleyman backed up his prediction with the exponential growth in computational power. According to the executive, as AI becomes more advanced, AI models will be able to code better than most humans.

As early as 2024, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang indicated that coding might be dead in the water as a career option for the next generation. He encouraged the youth to explore alternative career options in biology, education, manufacturing, or farming. Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman shared the same sentiments, suggesting that:

"If you go forward 24 months from now, or some amount of time — I can't exactly predict where it is — it's possible that most developers are not coding."

Microsoft's co-founder, Bill Gates, previously shared insights into AI's impact on jobs, suggesting it'll replace humans for most things. However, the executive indicated the coders, biologists, and energy experts would weather the storm and survive the AI revolution.

The philanthropic billionaire indicated that generative AI lacks the creativity and judgment to replace human programmers, even in a century. Last year, Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei claimed that AI was on the verge of slashing up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, making it harder for the next generation to get into the job market.

The future of generative AI in the workplace remains uncertain, especially as reports warn the bubble may be bursting, with investor interest fading amid unclear paths to profitability

AI should be poised to reshape how we work by automating repetitive tasks, freeing us to focus on what truly matters. That way, I see it as a powerful productivity tool rather than a replacement for professionals.

For big tech companies, the challenge lies in solving the complex puzzle of securing sufficient computing power, attracting top AI talent, and sustaining the funding needed to drive meaningful advances in the field.

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Updated 19/5/2026: This article has been updated to reflect a statement from Microsoft.I heard back from Microsoft about the issue flagged by Excel users about the unremovable floating Copilot button. The company shared two resources: one on how to disable Copilot in Excel and Word, and the other talked about architecting Copilot into Office apps as part of its broader strategy to "build an AI-forward design system that supports work today, while carrying us into tomorrow."

I had my head buried behind a Windows PC as early as the Microsoft Encarta days, but I’ve never quite managed to master Microsoft Excel. However, Microsoft's strategic partnership with OpenAI and the consequent integration of generative AI across its tech stack seemingly aimed to transform the user experience from an uphill climb to a walk in the park.

While Copilot in Excel might be viewed as a game-changer, allowing users to generate and explain formulas, summarize large datasets into charts, and more, Microsoft has seemingly resorted to disrupting the app's user experience with a floating Copilot button (via Neowin).

The change has received backlash from users because there's no way to hide the button from your user interface. However, you can right-click the floating Copilot button and select the Dock option, which will only slide the button to the side of the screen "with a caret-like behavior that launches the Copilot side panel and returns the floating button if you click on it," as the outlet describes the experience.

"The icon is visually disruptive and gets in the way for those that do NOT want to use Copilot - and lots of people don't," a user lamented. "And of course, speaking of which, even uninstalling it does not work, because it just gets reinstalled in the next update. What gives? Please stop trying to force people to use your apps when they do not want to. The only thing that it does is to make them look at alternatives. I know I certainly am."

The floating Copilot button does ship with useful capabilities, including options to either conduct research or create a table. Still, users have expressed reservations about the change and requested that Microsoft return it to its original position in the toolbar at the top or include an option to hide the floating button completely, while describing it as "visually disruptive."

According to a user in Excel's dedicated feedback hub: "Please get rid of the floating copilot icon at the bottom right of my Excel screen, or give me a way to turn it off. I do not want, nor need, Copilot in any capacity. Its presence is infuriating."

"This is atrocious implementation," another user added. "I capture screenshots for validation, and this is inserting itself over the data, which already has limited space on my screen. The button also blocks clicking the scroll bar at the point it overlaps (docked and undocked), at least on MacOS 26.4.1 (25E253)."

"Putting a button over the working content was not a good move by Microsoft. There needs to be a toggle or something to move it back to the ribbon (without requiring the admin to do it for our work 365 accounts). Or just undo this change, it was completely unnecessary."

In the past, Microsoft has been on the spot for forcibly integrating Copilot across its tech stack, specifically Windows 11. It's only recently that the company decided to scale back its aggressive AI push across its operating system by reducing where Copilot buttons and menus appear as part of its broader Windows "K2" initiative, which is designed to address pain points across the operating system and improve its overall user sentiment.

It'll be interesting to see whether Microsoft listens to feedback about adding an option to hide the floating Copilot button in Excel, and how fast it acts. While the integration can be useful, Microsoft should always give users control over Copilot, allowing them to surface it when they need it.

I've reached out to Microsoft for a comment about the issue and will update this article as more information becomes available.

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Last year, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella revealed that the company writes up to 30% of its code using generative AI. As it now happens, Microsoft is reportedly planning to reduce the use of Anthropic's Claude Code — a move designed to push its employees toward GitHub Copilot CLI.

For context, The Verge's Tom Warren reported that Microsoft started opening access to Claude Code for its employees in December, including developers, project managers, and designers, allowing them to interact and experiment with the AI-coding assistant directly in their workflows.

Warren reports that Claude Code gained vast popularity among Microsoft employees over the past six months, which has seemingly led to a pullback on its Claude Code push in favor of its own GitHub Copilot CLI. "While Claude Code has been a popular addition, it has also undermined Microsoft’s new GitHub Copilot CLI coding tool," Warren explained.

According to Warren's sources, Microsoft’s Experiences + Devices division, which includes teams working on Windows, Microsoft 365, Outlook, Teams, and Surface, is supposed to stop using Claude Code by the end of June. These teams are expected to transition their workflows to GitHub Copilot CLI over the next few weeks.

The report reveals that the decision isn't centered on Microsoft pushing its staffers towards its own offering — there are some financial implications at play, too. Microsoft's financial year is expected to end on June 30, which means canceling Claude Code licenses for its employees could cut its operational costs as it transitions into a new financial year.

While speaking to The Verge, Microsoft's VP of experiences and devices group, Rajesh Jha, indicated:

“When we began offering both Copilot CLI and Claude Code, our goal was to learn quickly, benchmark the tools in real engineering workflows, and understand what best supported our teams. Claude Code was an important part of that learning… at the same time, Copilot CLI has given us something especially important: a product we can help shape directly with GitHub for Microsoft’s repos, workflows, security expectations, and engineering needs.”

It'll be interesting to see how the transition from Claude Code to GitHub Copilot CLI is received, especially since the vast majority seems to favor the former. The company's initial plan was to have its engineers use both offerings concurrently, to compare their capabilities, and to provide feedback.

Interestingly, Microsoft staffers have seemingly preferred Claude Cove over GitHub Copilot over the past few months, primarily because of the feature disparity between the two products.

In the interim, I reported that Microsoft is actively looking into AI startup acquisitions to cement its position in the AI landscape, including Cursor AI. However, that deal might not see the light of day as it could trigger regulatory scrutiny for Microsoft. This is because GitHub Copilot and Cursor are curiously similar in the AI coding space.

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Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI traces back to the Windows Phone era, when CEO Satya Nadella was still using the device daily. A screenshot shared by The Verge’s Tom Warren shows emails between Sam Altman and Nadella dating to April 7, 2015 — suggesting the multibillion‑dollar alliance may have begun even earlier.

Nadella later admitted that pulling the plug on Windows Phone was a strategic mistake. But I digress... Microsoft is now doubling down on AI, integrating the technology across its products and services. This is primarily due to its partnership with OpenAI.

Investors have raised concerns about the company's fixation on AI, especially since it's particularly hard to establish a clear path to profitability. Market analysts predict that investor interest is waning after Microsoft lost approximately a quarter of its value in the first three months of 2026, perhaps the steepest quarterly drop ever since the 2008 financial crisis.

Yesterday, I reported that Microsoft has generated approximately $30 billion in revenue since it partnered with OpenAI. But as it now seems, this barely makes a dent in how much it has spent.

Microsoft corporate development lead Michael Wetter has now confirmed through testimony in the ongoing Musk v. Altman trial that it has spent more than $100 billion on its partnership with OpenAI, largely on infrastructure and hosting costs (via Bloomberg).

“We needed to build Azure infrastructure in advance of providing those services to OpenAI,” Wetter added. Microsoft incurred most of these costs before receiving any revenue from OpenAI.

This staggering figure underscores how central OpenAI has become to Microsoft’s AI strategy. In the same breath, it also shows how instrumental Microsoft's partnership has been to OpenAI's rapid growth.

It's worth noting that the $100 billion mentioned above includes Microsoft's $13 billion investment in OpenAI and is cumulative through the current fiscal year ending June.

While taking the stand on Monday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella indicated that he was “very proud” that Microsoft took the risk to invest in OpenAI when “no one else was willing” to bet on the ever-evolving technology. Despite doubts from Microsoft co‑founder Bill Gates, who opposed Satya Nadella’s $1 billion investment in OpenAI in 2019 due to its non‑profit structure, the deal went forward.

Microsoft and OpenAI recently renewed their vows under a new non-exclusive partnership, meaning the tech giant will no longer need to pay OpenAI a revenue share. The new deal capped OpenAI's revenue-sharing payments at $38 billion through 2030, saving it approximately $97 billion when compared to the terms in the original agreement.

Microsoft is building an OpenAI-free future

In an exclusive report by Reuters, Microsoft is reportedly exploring AI startup acquisitions, potentially emancipating itself from an overreliance on OpenAI to power its tech stack.

The report suggests that acquisitions will help Microsoft assemble top AI talent, accelerating progress toward developing an in‑house model as early as next year. The company has already made significant strides, even reassigning AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman to focus on frontier models and the pursuit of superintelligence.

Microsoft reportedly considered acquiring Cursor this spring but backed out, fearing antitrust scrutiny since it already owns GitHub Copilot, another code‑generation tool.

The company is exploring a possible acquisition of Inception, a startup developing LLMs with a different approach, though insiders say the deal may never happen.

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In 2024, a report claimed that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates is still intimately involved in the company's affairs despite stepping down from the board to focus on philanthropy. It further revealed that the executive's word is treated as the gospel and that he played a crucial role in fostering Microsoft and OpenAI's partnership.

Interestingly, a separate report revealed that Bill Gates was initially skeptical about Microsoft investing $1 billion in OpenAI, primarily because of its non-profit structure. "You're going to burn this billion dollars," warned Gates.

But as it now seems, Gates was wrong. A new report by The Information revealed that Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI has generated approximately $30 billion in revenue for the former between 2023 and 2025 based on the tech giant's corporate documents and internal material, which is more than twice its investment ($13 billion) in the AI firm.

For context, most of this revenue comes from OpenAI's infrastructure needs, with reports suggesting that the ChatGPT maker spent up to $23 billion between 2023 and 2025 to rent out Microsoft’s Azure servers. The rest of the revenue comes from AI-powered products and services, such as Office 365 Copilot and GitHub Copilot.

That said, the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership has evolved significantly over the past year, first signing a new definitive agreement in October 2025 that will allow OpenAI to sever its ties with Microsoft only after an independent body verifies that the AI firm has indeed achieved artificial general intelligence (AGI).

As OpenAI evolved into a for-profit entity to secure more funding from investors, Microsoft now holds a 27% stake, translating to approximately $135 billion.

The partnership also recently turned non-exclusive. This means Microsoft will no longer need to pay OpenAI a revenue share. The new deal capped OpenAI's revenue-sharing payments at $38 billion through 2030, saving it approximately $97 billion when compared to the terms in the original agreement.

It's worth noting that tech giant remains OpenAI’s primary cloud partner and its products will ship on Azure first. However, the ChatGPT maker can still provide all its products to customers across any cloud provider if it fails or chooses not to support the necessary capabilities.

Microsoft's partnership seems fractured

It's no secret that there's been a bit of tension between Microsoft and OpenAI. Elon Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI, citing that the company defrauded him out of millions of dollars by using a fake humanitarian mission with Microsoft's help, doesn't make things better.

Microsoft has been taking elaborate measures, seemingly emancipating itself from an over-reliance on OpenAI for its technologies, including developing its own in-house frontier AI models.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff predicted that Microsoft would not use OpenAI in the future, shortly after the company announced its now-cancelled $500 billion Stargate project, which was designed to construct data centers across the United States to meet its computing power needs.

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As generative AI becomes more widely adopted, major tech brands like Microsoft and OpenAI have emphasized the need for additional data centers to deliver the vast computing power required, along with specialized hardware and advanced cooling required to train and operate modern AI models at scale.

In May 2024, Microsoft entered into a partnership with UAE-based AI firm G42 to invest $1 billion in a data center in my home country, Kenya, as part of its broader strategy to expand cloud-computing services in East Africa.

However, Bloomberg reports that the project has since stalled after the Kenyan government failed to commit to paying for the annual capacity ‌Microsoft had requested to run Azure in the region. President William Ruto indicated that the project's power requirements would need to "switch off half the country" to keep the facility running (via Tom's Hardware).

In the interim, Kenya’s Ministry ​of Information, John Tanui, explained that the country has "not failed or withdrawn,” and that it's moving forward with discussions about the project.

KPLC can barely keep the lights on for the basics

For context, Kenya's total installed electricity capacity sits between 3,000 and 3,100 megawatts. Keep in mind, the country's peak demand hit a record 2,444 megawatts in January, according to KenGen, Kenya's government-owned electricity provider.

G42 was expected to lead the construction of the project, which was to be based in Kenya’s Rift Valley at the Olkaria region. The first phase targeted 100 megawatts, with a long-term plan to scale up to 1 gigawatt.

I live in Nairobi, Kenya's capital, and I can say openly that I face sporadic power disruptions multiple times every month. The situation is worse in remote areas, with some outrighly not being connected to the national grid.

With this in mind, Microsoft's massive $1 billion data center in Kenya seems like a hard sell and would stress our country's electricity capacity. This is on top of the health concerns, air pollution, and massive demand for cooling water that come with the construction of data centers.

This hits closer to home, and while it promises great economic benefits in the long run, Kenya isn't exactly ready to take on such a grand project without critical compromises.

How would Microsoft's massive AI data center affect Kenya's national power grid? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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Yesterday, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella took the stand in US District Court in Oakland, California, where he testified about his relationship with Elon Musk, Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI, and more. The executive indicated that he has never received a clear explanation from the company's board of directors why Sam Altman was briefly ousted as OpenAI CEO.

At the time, reports emerged suggesting that Satya Nadella was blindsided by the move. He further revealed that he wasn't told about the decision to fire Altman in advance, and was only pulled out of a meeting and informed about the ouster after the fact.

The board members had revealed that Altman wasn’t consistently candid with his leadership, operations, and efforts (via CNBC). However, Satya Nadella dismissed these claims, suggesting that there was more than meets the eye, further indicating that “[t]here may have been some jealousy … coming through.” — “It was sort of amateur city, as far as I’m concerned,” Nadella added.

Elon Musk has accused OpenAI, Sam Altman, and Greg Brockman of defrauding him out of billions of dollars that he invested in OpenAI using a fake humanitarian mission. He also added Microsoft to the fold, claiming that the tech giant helped Altman and Brockman defraud him.

Interestingly, Nadella testified that Elon Musk never reached out about issues with Microsoft's deal with OpenAI, although they have each other's phone numbers. He even showed the jurors an email Musk had sent him, thanking him for financial and computing support for OpenAI in 2016: "Very much appreciated," Musk indicated in the email. "Will make sure that people know about Microsoft's help."

Satya Nadella indicated that Elon Musk didn't raise any issues when the company initially made a $1 billion investment in OpenAI in 2019. Similarly, he remained quiet when the news broke that Microsoft's investment stake in OpenAI had risen to $10 billion.

Nadella indicated that he was “very proud” that Microsoft took the risk to invest in OpenAI when “no one else was willing” to bet on the ever-evolving technology and OpenAI. The Microsoft executive further revealed that the company took a $15 million loss by letting OpenAI use Azure at a discount to power ChatGPT.

With this in mind, Nadella's testimony in the ongoing Musk v. Altman trial, the billionaire only began complaining about Microsoft and OpenAI's partnership after he filed the 2024 lawsuit. This also seemingly supports the theory and speculation that Musk is a sore loser, as he tries to compete against ChatGPT with Grok.

Nadella was also questioned about his "It wouldn't matter if OpenAI disappeared tomorrow" remark amid tension between Microsoft and OpenAI. "We have the data, IP rights, and all the capability." —"We are below them, above them, around them," Nadella added.

The statement was viewed as "a new war slogan" by some of the executive's fans. While this might be used by Musk's legal team to support his premise about donating $38 million to a charitable cause, only for OpenAI to evolve into a for-profit venture, abandoning its founding mission.

While on the stand, Nadella indicated that he used the statement to calm concerns about Altman's sudden ouster as CEO. "It goes back to me trying to communicate as clearly as possible to customers that they can count on us," Nadella indicated, suggesting that Copilot and other OpenAI products would continue, regardless of OpenAI's situation. We'll see.

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Over the past few years, Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk has dragged OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman to court, citing involvement in racketeering and a fake humanitarian mission.

As you may know, the Musk v. Altman trial is still ongoing in court, where the billionaire claims he was defrauded out of billions of dollars that he invested in OpenAI. He claims that the company abandoned its founding mission after it transitioned from a non-profit business structure to a combination of a non-profit and for-profit arm, shortly after he departed.

More recently, court documents shed further light on the early days when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman were discussing forming their multi-billion-dollar partnership. Interestingly, high-profile Microsoft executives seemed to be a bit skeptical about investing in OpenAI, expressing fears that the AI startup could "storm off to Amazon" and potentially "shit-talk" Microsoft (via The Verge).

For context, OpenAI was mainly focused on developing AI-powered gaming bots, which seemingly caught the eye of Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella when the company's bot managed to beat a Dota 2 professional. Nadella sent Altman a congratulatory email, which he (Altman) seized as an opportunity to propose an even bigger partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft.

However, OpenAI needed much more computing power to scale its Dota 2 project, which was significantly more than the Azure credits it was receiving from Microsoft at the time. “Probably something like $300 million at Azure list prices,” Altman indicated.

This ended up spooking some of the top executives at Microsoft. “For those numbers to make sense, we’d have to be generating significant incremental revenue directly due to the deal ($500 million+) that couldn’t be gained in a more efficient way,” indicated Jason Zander, who was Microsoft’s Azure chief at the time, in an August 2017 email to Nadella.

Later on, Sam Altman circled back with an alternative proposal to “create a partnership with Xbox around gaming, and an open offer to share their technology and IP in exchange for expanded sponsorship for their Dota research,” as highlighted by Brett Tanzer, Microsoft's VP of Azure solutions and ecosystem.

While Microsoft's Xbox division was open to exploring new collaboration opportunities, committing to the research cost was an uphill task. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott admitted to Satya Nadella that he wasn't sure what the company would get out of the deal if it agreed to give OpenAI more Azure credits for its research. At the same time, he was concerned about OpenAI moving to Amazon for support.

A year later, in 2019, Kevin Scott admitted to Microsoft co‑founder Bill Gates and CEO Satya Nadella that he had been "highly dismissive" of AI efforts at OpenAI and Google DeepMind, when the companies were busy competing to see who "could achieve the most impressive game‑playing stunt."

Scott became more interested in the AI game when OpenAI shifted to natural language processing models like ChatGPT, which signaled that Microsoft would shift behind Google's AI efforts, leading to Microsoft's making its first $1 billion investment in OpenAI, even though Bill Gates was against the idea and viewed it as a waste.

In 2026, a separate report emerged suggesting that Microsoft was considering suing OpenAI over a $50 billion deal with Amazon, alleging that it violates a critical clause granting Microsoft exclusive rights as OpenAI’s cloud provider through Azure.

So, Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar partnership with OpenAI continues to be fragmented. Recently, the ChatGPT maker ended its exclusive partnership with Microsoft, meaning Microsoft will no longer need to pay a revenue share to OpenAI. How much more fragmented could all this possibly get?

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Earlier this week, it was discovered that Google Chrome "silently" downloads and installs a 4GB on-device AI model to PCs. While the move has drawn backlash from users, Google dismissed claims that the model is any kind of spyware or bloatware.

The company indicated that the "weights.bin" file powering Gemini Nano is designed to protect the user's privacy when interacting with new AI features within the browser because "it powers important security capabilities like scam detection and developer APIs without sending your data to the cloud."

Luckily, there's a new Windows 11 Registry setting dubbed “GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings” designed to help organizations establish control over how the browser handles local generative AI models (via Neowin). As such, users can use this policy to disable Google Chrome's 4GB Gemini Nano AI model.

Google already indicated that it started rolling out the ability for users to easily turn off or completely remove its model directly in Chrome's settings in February. But as highlighted by security researcher Alexander Hanff (also known as "That Privacy Guy"), "If the user deletes it, Chrome re-downloads it."

The same also applies to Microsoft Edge, meaning the browser can download a local AI model for on-device generative AI features without explicit user consent, potentially eating up disk space and bandwidth.

Now, this new Windows 11 Registry policy supports dynamic refresh, allowing administrators to apply changes without requiring users to restart their browsers. Although primarily designed for office environments, it’s also available to individual users running Windows 11 Pro. Configuration can be done through Group Policy, Registry settings, or enterprise management tools.

Through the policy, you can either select the “Allowed (0)” setting, which will allow Microsoft Edge to automatically download the AI model for on-device inferencing, or select the “Disallowed (1)” option to prevent the browser from downloading the AI model and remove any model that was previously downloaded and installed on your device. It's worth noting that this applies to Google Chrome, too.

To block Microsoft Edge from downloading the AI model for local inferencing, follow the steps highlighted below:

1. Open Registry Editor (REGEDIT.msc).
2. Navigate to: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Edge
3. Set the value of "GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings" to 1

You can repeat the same steps if you're using Google Chrome as your daily driver by navigating through HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Google\Chrome\ and then setting the value of "GenAILocalFoundationalModelSettings" to 1. It's the same method.

It's important to make sure you've configured this policy, especially if you're running Google Chrome version 147 or later, because it will download the local AI model by default. The feature is also supported on macOS and is available to Microsoft Edge users starting with version 132. However, it's not supported on iOS.

I'm conflicted. On one hand, blocking AI models means that I won't get access to local AI, which is (usually) inherently safer than the cloud. On the other hand, leaving the feature enabled means it can consume my storage and bandwidth without notice, and I can't ignore the outcry of privacy and security concerns around any kind of AI.

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Google Chrome stands as the most popular web browser, with a 67.97% share worldwide (translating to around 3.62 billion people), at least according to StatCounter. Apple's Safari comes in at a distant second with 17.09%.

In a surprising turn of events, security researcher Alexander Hanff (also known as "That Privacy Guy") released a damning report alleging that Google Chrome is silently downloading and installing a 4GB on-device AI model onto users’ devices without their knowledge or consent (via Tom's Hardware).

Perhaps more concerningly, Hanff flagged a similar issue with Anthropic's AI software, citing that the company's Claude Desktop app installed a Native Messaging bridge across seven Chromium-based browsers on every system it was installed on.

Alexander Hanff described his discoveries as a broader look at the patterns in how big tech deploys AI features across its portfolios and properties. While the news of Google Chrome installing a 4GB AI model has sparked controversy, with many referring to it as bloatware or spyware, the AI model is actually designed to protect your privacy when you're using AI features.

For context, navigating to your hard drive’s Chrome User Data folder (C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data), you'll discover a massive folder called OptGuideOnDeviceModel containing a big file named “weights.bin.”

weights.bin is Google's Gemini Nano on-device AI model and is part of Google's broader strategy to integrate AI tech directly into its Chromium-based browser. Chrome depends on these weights to run AI features locally on your device instead of via the cloud, which comes with its fair share of challenges, including data privacy questions.

While speaking to Android Authority, a Google spokesperson commented on the issue:

Interestingly, the large file does seemingly come with a "warning" that Chrome will download it, suggesting that the browser may have been granted permission to download any files it requires to function.

"Chrome does not surface it," That Privacy Guy added. "If the user deletes it, Chrome re-downloads it."

So, Google Chrome will automatically download the AI model directly to your computer when you first interact with any feature that relies on its new AI-centric APIs. However, your device must meet the following specifications:

• OS: Windows 10 or 11; macOS 13 or later; Linux; Chrome OS on Chromebook Plus devices.
• Storage: 22GB of free space.
• CPU or GPU: Built-in models can run with a GPU or a CPU:
• GPU: More than 4GB of VRAM.
• CPU: 16GB of RAM or more and four CPU cores or more.
• Network: Unlimited data or an unmetered connection for the initial model download.

To find out whether the foundational model has already been installed on your device, navigate to chrome://on-device-internals in Google Chrome’s address bar. You can also check the model's version, installation path, and folder size in the Model Status section.

Windows Central's take

It's quite obvious that users have been split on the usefulness of AI on their PCs for a while now. Some would rather have AI features completely scrapped from their systems, while others have found reasonable use cases to support their workflows and hobbies.

I'm not opposed to the idea of having AI features embedded into my operating system, as it seems that's the direction the world is headed anyway. Still, I'd rather "Big Tech" use more subtle approaches to their AI roadmap. For instance, giving users more control over how AI is deployed onto their devices, with complete transparency, and at the very least, having an option to opt out of experiences that might not necessarily be viewed as paramount for the everyday user.

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Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar partnership with OpenAI remains fragmented. In the most recent development, the ChatGPT maker ended its exclusive partnership with Microsoft, marking a new trajectory for both companies.

For instance, Microsoft will no longer need to pay a revenue share to OpenAI. While the tech giant remains OpenAI’s primary cloud partner and its products will ship on Azure first, the AI firm can still provide all its products to customers across any cloud provider if it fails or chooses not to support the necessary capabilities.

Microsoft has heavily injected generative AI technologies across its entire tech portfolio, including Windows 11 with Copilot as the star of the show. This all happened despite market analysts and experts sounding an alarm that investor interest in the ever-evolving technology is waning, especially because big tech has failed to establish a clear path to profitability.

In March, analysts speculated that Microsoft was on the verge of closing its worst quarter since the 2008 financial crisis. However, the tech giant isn't giving up on its AI ambitions, as it plans to invest $146 billion in infrastructure in 2026.

Multiple reports have suggested that Microsoft is facing internal struggles meeting its AI struggles, which has forced it to make cuts in its sales department. They further elaborated that the root cause of this issue is that nobody wants to use the company's AI products.

During the company's latest quarterly earnings call, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was singing a different tune — indicating that Microsoft 365 Copilot now has 20 million paid enterprise Copilot seats. The executive further indicated that users are actually engaging with the tool as much as they do with email.

According to Nadella: “Copilot queries per user were up nearly 20% quarter-over-quarter. To put this momentum in perspective, weekly engagement is now at the same level as Outlook,” he said. “This is like a daily habit of intense usage.”

This contrasts with a separate report from earlier this year that suggested only 3.3% of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 users who interact with Copilot actually pay for it. That said, Microsoft's new non-exclusive deal with OpenAI could leave Copilot AI in a difficult position in Windows 11.

Where does Microsoft's non-exclusive agreement with OpenAI leave Copilot in Windows 11?

“You now have access in chat to multiple models by default, with intelligent auto routing in agents with critique and counsel," Nadella said, while explaining that Copilot is not dependent on one model. "You can use multiple models together to generate optimal responses.”

While Copilot isn’t entirely reliant on OpenAI’s models, it closely resembles ChatGPT. Both are nearly at feature parity and share the same underlying technology for image generation and more.

One of the major complaints at Microsoft's AI division by users is that Copilot isn't as good as ChatGPT. However, the company quickly dismissed the claims, shifting blame to a lack of prompt engineering skills.

Last year, Microsoft Teams lead Jeff Taper admitted that Copilot and ChatGPT are practically the same thing, but the former sports better security and a more powerful user experience.

But will things remain the same even after Microsoft's new non-exclusive deal with OpenAI? The deal dictates that the tech giant will continue to have a license to OpenAI IP for models and products through 2032. However, the license is now non-exclusive.

While Microsoft Copilot in Windows 11 will still be powered by OpenAI's technologies, clearing any doubts about service disruptions, the non-exclusive license means the tech giant has instantly lost its bargaining chip in the ever-evolving AI landscape — privileged access.

As such, OpenAI can license its models to rival companies like Google, Amazon, and even Apple, which means Copilot won't be the only product with a direct OpenAI integration, seemingly costing Microsoft its unique selling point.

Microsoft remains uniquely positioned to weather this storm thanks to its massive Windows, Office, and Azure server platforms. By embedding AI early across its tech stack, the company leveraged an already-secured market to drive adoption of new AI offerings — an advantage that competitors may struggle to replicate.

Microsoft is developing in-house AI models in the interim

Right now, it doesn't seem far-fetched that Microsoft and OpenAI could potentially sever their ties in the future. Even Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff made a similar prediction after OpenAI announced its now-cancelled $500 billion Stargate project. And it seems like Microsoft is aware.

Over the past few months, Microsoft has made several strategic moves to secure its position in the AI landscape, including reshuffling its Copilot leadership. Former Snap Senior VP Jacob Andreou now leads Copilot experiences, both consumer and commercial, as an executive vice president reporting to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, while Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman will shift focus to developing frontier AI models for the company.

Last year, Microsoft started developing its own in-house AI models and testing third-party ones for Copilot, potentially freeing itself from an overdependence on OpenAI for its AI efforts. However, Mustafa Suleyman confirmed that the company is developing "off-frontier" AI models, but admitted that they'd play a close second to OpenAI's sophisticated technology.

More recently, Microsoft has put elaborate measures in place to improve the general user sentiment about Windows 11 by addressing major pain points across the OS, including reducing where Copilot integrations appear.

But Microsoft isn't pulling the plug on AI in Windows 11 entirely. The company recently added support for AI agents on the Taskbar, Xbox mode, and other notable features.

It'll be interesting to see where Copilot AI in Windows 11 ends up, especially as Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI continues to evolve.

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Late last year, we learned that Microsoft planned to kill the Sidebar feature in its Edge browser. "We're simplifying Edge," the company explained. "New apps can no longer be added, and the quick access list will be removed gradually in future updates."

Interestingly, the company indicated that Copilot won't be affected by the change, further highlighting that the Sidebar's retirement will help it focus on improving its user experience.

The change seems unpopular among most users, and now, a petition has been launched to potentially get Microsoft's attention and even get it to pull the plug on its plan to retire Edge's Sidebar completely. At the time of writing, the petition had 74 verified signatures.

For context, the Sidebar in Edge is a tool designed to help users access tools and view websites and web apps within a small dedicated window, and can be used without leaving a webpage. When you launch Microsoft Edge on your PC, you'll notice the Sidebar on the edge of your browser window.

Copilot is also conveniently positioned in the same location. It's easy to subscribe to the notion across social media, suggesting the Sidebar's retirement is just another big push by Microsoft to get more users to use Copilot.

Petition to stop the removal of MS Edge's sidebar. from r/MicrosoftEdge

As highlighted in the "Keep the sidebar and collections in the Microsoft Edge browser" petition, the main issue is summarized as a message: "Microsoft Edge team, it makes no sense to remove a feature that users love—it’s very useful and works perfectly. Plus, this is one of the few features that sets Edge apart from other browsers. Please keep the current sidebar and collections, don’t remove it."

A quick look at Microsoft's feedback portal, highlighting the retirement of Edge's Sidebar, reveals that a vast majority of users are against the change. A user indicated that if the company moves forward with its plans to kill the feature, it should at the very least consider making it optional.

"God forbid the sidebar is removed," another user lamented. "I am literally only on MS Edge for that very reason."

That said, Microsoft has been making elaborate measures to rehabilitate and improve the current state of Windows 11 and address major pain points across the OS. Part of these efforts includes the return of Windows Insider meetups to bridge the gap between the developers and users, returning fan-favorite features like the movable and resizable Taskbar and more.

Interestingly, Microsoft is actively reducing where Copilot and its integrations appear, and has already lived up to part of the promise by removing the AI assistant from its Notepad app. However, some users have argued that the company renamed it to AI writing tools.

Elsewhere, Microsoft isn't walking away from AI entirely either. It recently added support for AI agents on the Taskbar and Search Box in Windows 11. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft handles complaints lodged by users and whether it will reconsider killing Edge's Sidebar.

On the flip side, some users are less-than-optimistic that Microsoft will reconsider its position about killing Edge's Sidebar. "Unfortunately, this won't achieve anything," one user commented. "If a large bureaucratic corporation has made a decision, it's already inevitable, and user feedback won't have any effect on it."

Do you find the Sidebar in Microsoft Edge useful? Let me know in the comments.

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Over the past few years, Microsoft has deeply integrated AI technology across its tech stack, specifically Windows 11, by adding features like Copilot and Windows Recall. The tools have been received with mixed reactions, primarily due to the security and privacy concerns around AI.

While it's possible to disable tools like Windows Recall and even uninstall Windows 11, some users still prefer the operating system in its most basic form. Enter, NTLite.

As its slogan suggests, NTLite is a Windows customization tool that claims, "Simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication." It's designed to give users more control over Windows 11, as is the case with its latest update.

NTLite v2026.04.10936 (that's a long version number) now ships with faster multi-threaded extraction and the ability to remove AI tools from Windows 11 25H2 images, which consequently significantly reduces installation size.

I recently reported that the customization scene in Windows 11 is thriving, as third-party developers give users the experience they've wanted from Microsoft.

So, now there's an influx of third-party tools like NTLite entering the scene, specifically designed to make Windows 11 feel less bloated by removing unwanted apps and features.

Interestingly, we recently broke the story about Windows K2 — a codenamed Microsoft initiative designed to address major pain points across Windows 11 based on customer feedback.

As part of Microsoft's promise, the company has also brought back Windows Insider meetups to bridge the gap between the development team and users, returned the movable and resizable Taskbar, and even reduced instances where Copilot and other AI integrations appear across the operating system and apps like Notepad.

But Microsoft isn't pulling the plug on AI in Windows 11 entirely. The company recently added support for AI agents on the Taskbar, Xbox mode, and other notable features.

A quick look at the r/Windows11BuyingGuide subreddit highlights users' growing concerns about Windows. "I'm very seriously considering repartitioning my Windows machine and installing Linux Mint for my everyday use, keeping Windows for specific said apps only," one user indicated.

Windows 11 got so AI heavy that people made a delete the AI script from r/Windows11BuyingGuide

"Using Windows is more complicated than Linux now," another user lamented. "In the past, people thought you were a hacker if you used Linux, now you need to be a hacker to use Windows."

If you're not a fan of the AI integrations in Windows 11, then NTLite might actually come in handy. For context, the customization tool works with Windows Image files, including ISO, WIM, ESD, and SWM formats. What's more, it's possible to modify these files before installation.

The tool also supports live editing, which means users can make changes to an existing Windows installation without reinstalling it. As a result, it's easy to scrap newly added features that are introduced in the operating system without going through the hassle.

Additionally, NTLite ships with an AI Component Management option, helping users gain more control over AI integrations and features in the operating system. Windows 11, version 25H2, shipped with a notable number of AI-themed features, but the Windows customization tool can help you remove them, significantly reducing 25H2's size.

While NTLite greys out critical components on Windows 11 that cannot be safely removed, it's still important to exercise caution when interacting with the tool. If you mistakenly remove a critical component, you risk producing an image that fails to boot or install.

As such, it is advised to test ISO in a virtual machine to assess its stability and safety before deploying it to your daily driver device. It's also important to create restore points before making any significant changes to your system. Still, it's an impressive effort.

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A little over four years ago, Steam creator Valve invigorated the handheld gaming PC market with the Steam Deck. Featuring a strong balance of performance, battery longevity, and price alongside a smooth user experience driven by the bespoke Linux-based SteamOS and quality controls, it was an instant hit. And even as competing Windows devices like the ASUS ROG Ally, the Lenovo Legion Go 2, and the Xbox Ally have come along, the Steam Deck is still the preferred handheld of choice for many.

With the rise of AI bringing a widespread RAM shortage, however, Steam Deck stock has rapidly dried up this year, and it may not be back for a long time; reports indicate that AI datacenters are expected to use up 70% of available RAM in 2026, lengthening a memory crisis so severe that it's hamstringing countless industries, from the production of automotives to the creation of Xbox's upcoming Project Helix console.

To put it lightly, things look pretty bleak for the Steam Deck — especially since Valve recently halted production of the original LCD model, and is only working on making the pricier OLED variants now. In a new interview, however, programmer Pierre-Loup Griffais has promised that the firm is "working very hard" to bring the beloved handheld back in stock.

"Yeah, we don't really have any specific details to share about that, but it's something we're working hard on," he told IGN. "And as you are aware, there's a lot of considerations right now with respect to shipping being difficult, and also memory shortages and all that."

"So we've been trying to work through that because we are very cognizant of the fact that there's folks that want to get Steam Deck and they're not currently able to get it," Griffais added. "It's available in some regions right now, but in general, it's something that we're working very hard on."

In an effort to get its hands on as much RAM as it can — both for new Steam Decks as well as the delayed upcoming console-like Steam Machine gaming PC — Valve says it's aiming to "work with all the big players and some of the smaller ones as well" to have multiple sources of RAM to fall back on when supply runs dry elsewhere.

"We're trying to make sure to keep options open and to work with as many different manufacturers as we can," explained Griffais. "I think in general, that's something that we're doing throughout our hardware design and production phase where we're always cognizant of the fact that having a single source for a given part would put us downstream of potential shortages, and things like that in a way that affects the continuity of the supply and the price for end users."

"So from the get-go, we've been trying to make sure that we have many options there, and that's been proving really useful in this kind of climate, because we can work with all the big players and some of the smaller ones as well," he continued.

Of course, there's only so much Valve can do to mitigate the effects of the RAM crisis, as "the conditions around memory are pretty global right now." Still, Griffais points out that there was a similar situation with microcontroller during the pandemic, and Valve was able to weather it by employing this same strategy.

"Because we had so many different options open in terms of putting different types of microcontrollers in there, we were able to navigate that and keep some supply in a climate where maybe some other players were not able to do that," he added. "So we expect to be navigating the memory thing the same way."

One device not affected by the memory shortages is the new $99 Steam Controller, which comes out on May 4. It looks great, though many feel it's too pricey and will be hampered by its lack of compatibility with Xbox on PC and PC Game Pass.

Have you been trying to buy a new Steam Deck, but have been unable to do so due to the memory crisis preventing restocks? Let me know down below.

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Office and the Windows operating system are both synonymous with Microsoft, though many would argue that Windows carries greater weight in defining the software giant's influence. Still, it's no secret that Microsoft has struggled with driving user interest in Windows 11 since it shipped in October 2021.

The operating system’s sluggish adoption can be traced, in part, to Microsoft’s strict hardware requirements and some questionable design choices. With Windows 10 reaching its end of support on October 14, 2025, Windows 11's market share has grown significantly, but complaints about the OS' user experience persist.

Over the past few years, the tech giant has heavily integrated generative AI tools like Copilot across its entire tech stack, including Windows 11 and Microsoft 365. It remains debatable whether users find these integrations, but if the complaints lodged across social media platforms are anything to go by, it's mostly been a miss.

In a nostalgic video titled "Resetting the Microsoft Image Agenda" shared by X user WalkingCat, Frank X. Shaw, lead communications for Microsoft, indicated that "Windows 7 saved the company."

The executive indicated that skeptics had questioned Microsoft on "some core levels," including its ability to ship an operating system to the market on time without compromising on quality:

"They didn't believe we could do it. Vista was late, it didn't deliver what people wanted, and people said the operating system was dead and is not relevant," added Shaw.

While not in the exact way, one could argue that Microsoft is in a similar pickle with Windows 11. However, the Redmond giant has put elaborate measures in place that could potentially help it salvage the situation and save face.

Could Microsoft establish a master brand that casts a halo effect over Windows 11?

At the beginning of the year, Microsoft highlighted its plan to address major pain points across Windows 11, including the return of the fan-favorite movable and resizable Taskbar and a redesigned Start menu (though the interface overhaul has been received with mixed reactions).

Microsoft has also reevaluated its AI strategy in Windows 11, which may include streamlining its user experience across its ecosystem and even removing Copilot in apps like Notepad and Paint. Earlier this month, Microsoft scrapped Copilot from Notepad, replacing it with AI-powered "writing tools," but some users argue that the company just renamed Copilot instead of scrapping it entirely.

This does not mean that Windows 11 will be AI-free either. Next month, Microsoft plans to add support for AI agents on the Taskbar and Search Box in Windows 11.

While Microsoft is now listening to customer feedback, the Windows 11 customization scene thrived on third-party developers because Microsoft seemingly won't give users what they want. There's an influx of Windows 11 debloat tools emerging to help users make their user experience feel less bloated.

Windows K2 for the win?

The tech giant also brought back Windows Insider meetups, bridging the gap between real Windows 11 users and the team at Microsoft. The goal behind the meetups is simple — using customer feedback to enhance the operating system's user experience.

As it happens, Windows Central's Editor-in-Chief, Daniel Rubino, recently made his way to one of the Windows Insiders meetups in New York, where he learned about Microsoft's internal efforts to improve general user sentiment around Windows 11.

But more interestingly, we learned more about Windows K2, referred to as "a year‑long effort to raise the bar on performance, reliability, and craft across the platform, with deeper validation and broader testing on real‑world hardware before features reach wider audiences.

Windows K2 is an ongoing initiative, designed to ensure the quality of Windows remains high and consistent across current and future versions.

So, what about Windows 12? There has been a lot of speculation about Microsoft releasing a Windows 11 successor. However, the company dismissed the claims, indicating that it's doubling down on its efforts to improve and refine Windows 11 instead.

And all of a sudden, the air feels different, Microsoft cares, and Windows 11 can finally realize its full potential and even hit prime time. With over a billion users in the fold, jumping ship and releasing a different operating system could be reckless and miscalculated.

What are your thoughts about Microsoft's current strategy for Windows 11? Let me know in the comments.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

Windows 11 has been around for long enough to be the standard at this point, but it really gained its major traction and broad adoption after Windows 10's End of Life. Some reasons that might have contributed to a slower uptake include Microsoft's stringent hardware requirements for the operating system and, for some users, its flawed design elements.

Last week, I argued that the Windows 11 customization scene was thriving off of third-party developers because Microsoft seemingly won't give users what they want.

Building on this premise, there has been an influx of tools specifically designed to make Windows 11 feel less "bloated". While it's debatable whether Windows 11 is genuinely bloated, there are a ton of apps and programs preinstalled that might not be useful to the average user.

Our Managing Editor, Richard Devine, recently tinkered with Winhance to improve Windows 11's user experience, ultimately making the operating system feel less bloated. "That Winhance is so user-friendly is what makes it special in my eyes. It's not a tool built for nerds; it's built so anyone can understand it," Devine added.

Debloating Windows 11 remains a hot topic among its users, with some seeking straightforward scripts that can strip the OS down to its bare essentials. A quick look at the r/OptimizedGaming subreddit even shows a desire for custom Windows ISOs to debloat Windows 11 at the point of installation.

After skimming through comments, I noticed that AtlasOS, FoxOS, ReviOS, and GGOS were consistently recommended for the demanding task. I decided to take a look at AtlasOS, which is touted to create a "kinder" Windows experience.

It's essentially selling itself as a lightweight modification of Windows, designed for users looking for "a trusted, performant experience" without necessarily having to sacrifice functionality.

A lightweight Windows mod promises a lot on paper. Telemetry is a major pain point for Windows 11 users, as it collects diagnostic and usage data from your PC and reports to Microsoft. Many feel it's too intrusive, and what's worse, it's difficult to fully disable it.

While Microsoft argues that it improves performance, security, and reliability, some still view it as a data harvesting scheme. However, AtlasOS promises to scrap unnecessary background processes, telemetry, and more.

It also aims to enhance Windows 11's experience by removing Microsoft's unwanted ads and fixing other annoyances, while promoting privacy as a major selling point for the custom ISO.

AtlasOS claims to improve general CPU usage by significantly reducing sudden background spikes and freeing up 1.5 GB of RAM on boot, which can naturally be used for other apps. And finally, it boasts higher average framerates when running PC games like Valorant on Windows 11, expanding its appeal to gamers. Naturally, your mileage may vary.

Debloating Windows 11 can be a gamble

It goes without saying that running unsupported third-party apps could harm your Windows PC since it circumvents critical security measures required to ensure the operating system runs smoothly.

AtlasOS can specifically remove Windows Defender, Restore Points, and System Reset from your system. As such, it's important to exercise caution when interacting with such tools.

It's also worth noting that while AtlasOS gets security patches and cumulative updates, it skips feature updates to preserve optimizations. Additionally, it doesn't provide a rollback or recovery option to stock Windows 11, so you would need to reinstall Windows.

Luckily, Microsoft no longer forces users to install updates when setting up Windows 11, putting an end to the mandatory 30-minute update process forever. This is part of the tech giant's broader plans to address major pain points and improve the general user sentiment around the operating system in 2026.

Microsoft is already making good on its promise by reducing where Copilot and its integrations appear, and bringing back fan-favorite features like the movable and resizable Taskbar. Whether this tempts users away from custom ISOs like AtlasOS remains to be seen.

However, Microsoft isn't pulling the plug on AI entirely either. It recently highlighted its plans to add support for AI agents on the Taskbar and Search Box in Windows 11 next month.

What's your opinion about Windows 11's user experience? Would you use a "debloated" option like AtlasOS?

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It's never been a secret that Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI is less-than-ideal, and things might have just taken a turn for the worse. In a leaked memo exclusively viewed by CNBC, the ChatGPT maker is seemingly getting cozy with Amazon to bolster its enterprise business.

In case you missed it, OpenAI and Amazon have been in discussions over a $50 billion deal that could see the AI firm using its cloud computing services.

A separate report revealed that Microsoft was considering taking legal action against the two companies because the billion-dollar deal could potentially violate a critical clause granting Microsoft exclusive rights as the AI giant’s cloud provider through Azure.

Despite Microsoft's $13 billion (and counting) investment in OpenAI, the company's newly appointed revenue chief, Denise Dresser, indicated that the tie-up with the tech giant has seemingly capped its growth in the enterprise landscape.

“Our Microsoft partnership has been foundational to our success. But it has also limited our ability to meet enterprises where they are — for many that’s Bedrock,” Dresser highlighted in the memo. “Since we announced the partnership at the end of February, inbound demand from our customers for this offering has been frankly staggering.”

Right now, OpenAI is up against Anthropic's massive market share with Claude, not forgetting Google's Gemini, which is also gaining traction and adoption rapidly. As such, its new partnership with Amazon places it in a unique position to compete with its rivals on an even playing field.

Dresser called the enterprise market "noisy and volatile" while encouraging staffers to center their focus on customers. She also indicated that Anthropic's business model is built on “fear, restriction, and the idea that a small group of elites should control AI,” but says OpenAI's positive message will stand the test of time.

In the past, OpenAI has complained about Microsoft not meeting its cloud computing needs. But CEO Sam Altman indicated that the company was no longer compute-constrained after announcing the $500 billion Stargate project. However, the AI firm walked away from the project after it was unable to find agreeable terms with Oracle.

This news comes after market analysts and experts began sounding warnings about investor interest in AI after big tech companies invested in the ever-evolving landscape, which failed to establish clear paths to profitability.

Coincidentally, Microsoft has just closed its worst quarter since the 2008 financial crisis, which translates to approximately a quarter of its market value. However, the tech giant isn't giving up on its AI ambitions, as it plans to invest $146 billion in infrastructure in 2026.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

OpenAI is seemingly copying Microsoft's homework, at least for Windows Recall. The company has deployed a research preview feature dubbed Chronicle in its Codex agent. The memory-centric feature, which periodically grabs screenshots of your screen content to bolster understanding.

As such, the Codex agent can easily identify errors on the screen and the documents you are working on, consequently allowing you to gradually establish a firm grasp over how you work.

This way, it'll be easier for users to interact with Codex as the chronicle feature would have captured enough context, enhancing its user experience by making it more aware without necessarily having to repeat details or being super specific with your prompts.

It's worth noting that Chronicle works by running background agents that create memories based on screenshots it captures, which are temporarily stored on the device. "It uses rate limits quickly," OpenAI warned.

You can check and even edit these memories, but it's worth noting that other apps may have access to these files, too. Admittedly, this raises some privacy and security concerns, but the feature can be disabled from Codex’s menu bar app. Right now, the feature is limited to ChatGPT Pro members on macOS, except in the EU, UK, and Switzerland, which costs $200/month.

Is Codex's Chronicle just another Windows Recall?

Chronicle is essentially a developer‑friendly and lightweight version of Microsoft's controversial Windows Recall in Windows 11, designed to streamline workflows by improving coding efficiency.

But unlike Windows Recall, which focuses on continuously capturing snapshots of a user's activity on Windows 11, Chronicle's scope is fairly limited to developer workflows — making it less controversial in theory, at least so far.

As it happens, a new tool dubbed TotalRecall Reloaded has sparked fresh privacy and security concerns about Windows Recall. However, Microsoft watered down the security researcher's findings, classifying the issue as "not a vulnerability."

It will be interesting to see how Codex's Chronicle feature is adopted in the developer community and whether OpenAI will stay ahead of any privacy and security concerns that may arise.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

Windows Recall has wiggled its way back to the headlines of practically every major tech news publication for all the wrong reasons. First announced in 2024 as an AI-powered tool designed to take snapshots of your PC's screen every few seconds and use on-device AI to analyze and triage that content, allowing you to semantically search for anything you've ever done on your computer using natural language.

Microsoft delayed its rollout for over one year to address critical user concerns after being branded a security nightmare and a hacker's paradise by cybersecurity experts. The company shipped the controversial feature to broad availability in April 2025 with elaborate security measures, including isolating it in a "VBS Enclave" (making it unreadable to third-party apps) and filtering out sensitive information like passwords and credit card details.

However, more trouble lies ahead for Windows Recall users. While all the locally stored data captured by Windows Recall is now encrypted and viewable only with Windows Hello authentication, Security researcher Alexander Hagenah, author of the TotalRecall tool that made it easy to steal Windows Recall information from any Windows PC, recently cited new vulnerabilities that the AI-powered tool might be susceptible to on the TotalRecall GitHub page.

While Hagenah admits that Windows 11's security in Recall is good, the security expert details that the way Windows 11 delivers data makes it easy for bad actors to gain unauthorized access (via The Verge). “The vault is solid,” Hagenah indicated. “The delivery truck is not.”

Perhaps more concerningly, once a user has authenticated, the system passes along Windows Recall data to another system process dubbed d AIXHost.exe, which doesn't have the same security protections as the rest of the AI-powered tool.

As such, the TotalRecall Reloaded tool leverages an executable file to inject a DLL file into AIXHost.exe, and more alarmingly, it can be done even without admin privileges. It then lurks in the background for the user to launch Windows Recall and authenticate using Windows Hello.

Consequently, the tool can access snapshots_, OCR’d text, and other sensitive data that Recall sends to the AIXHost.exe process, which can persist long after the user stops using Recall.

TotalRecall Reloaded can grab your most recent snapshots, select metadata about the Recall database, and even delete your entire database without Windows Hello authentication.

The security researcher reported the discovery to Microsoft’s Security Response Center on March 6, but the tech giant indicated that it wasn't actually a bug and that it didn't have elaborate plans to fix it. On April 3, Microsoft officially classified the flagged issue as "not a vulnerability."

While speaking to Ars Technica, a Microsoft spokesman indicated:

"We appreciate Alexander Hagenah for identifying and responsibly reporting this issue. After careful investigation, we determined that the access patterns demonstrated are consistent with intended protections and existing controls, and do not represent a bypass of a security boundary or unauthorized access to data. The authorization period has a timeout and anti-hammering protection that limit the impact of malicious queries.”

Windows Central's take: Windows Recall continues to be a major pain point for Microsoft

The security and privacy issues that come with allowing Windows Recall to access your PC, including sensitive and personal information, are hard to ignore. Hagenah's findings suggest that Microsoft should put elaborate security measures in place to make its delivery mechanism more secure.

Earlier this year, Microsoft revealed that it was scaling back its AI overload in Windows 11, which includes scaling down Copilot. Windows Recall was also placed under review after backlash from users over security concerns, potentially signaling that it could evolve into something else entirely.

Elsewhere, privacy-focused communities and organizations like the Brave browser, Signal, and AdGuard for Windows introduced features that explicitly block Windows Recall from capturing snapshots of your PC.

Microsoft can and should do better: halt automatic recovery handoffs until the transfer path is hardened, publish a transparent threat model and mitigation plan, and give users a simple, opt‑out control that actually prevents snapshots and transfers. Anything less is asking people to trust a system that hasn’t yet earned it.

Do you use Windows Recall on Windows 11? Let me know in the comments.

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At the beginning of this month, Microsoft unveiled a host of in-house AI models, including MAI-Transcribe-1, MAI-Voice-1 , and MAI-Image-2 with next-gen capabilities across transcription, voice, and image generation.

Now, the tech giant is lowering the cost for MAI-Image-2-Efficient while simultaneously making it faster. The company touts the tool as its "best text-to-image model" as it generates "photorealistic and expressive" images with reliable in-image text.

Microsoft says the model is now 22% faster and 4x more efficient, with 41% of the cost tipped off the scale. More specifically, it'll cost "$5 per 1M text input tokens, $19.50 per 1M image output."

MAI-Image-2-Efficient will seemingly be faster than its flagship model and 40% faster on average than hyperscaler models. Perhaps more interestingly, Microsoft has two separate text-to-image models: MAI-Image-2-Efficient and MAI-Image-2.

The company refers to the former as a production workhorse, which is the perfect option when you need "volume, speed, and tight cost control." The tool is great at generating product shots and UI mockups, primarily because it handles short-form text like headlines and labels well. What's more, it's built to run in interactive workflows seamlessly.

On the other hand, MAI-Image-2 is your go-to tool when your primary focus is precision. It excels at high fidelity demands like photorealistic scenes, stylized looks like anime or illustration, and longer or more complex in-image text. This means it will pay close attention and deliver an output that closely aligns with your detailed prompt.

That said, MAI-Image-2-Efficient is available in general availability and can be accessed in Microsoft Foundry and MAI Playground. Microsoft has also promised to integrate the tool into Copilot and Bing soon.

Windows Central's take

Over the past few months, Microsoft has doubled down on its AI efforts outside its partnership with OpenAI. This comes amid rising investor concern over its exorbitant spending on the ever-evolving landscape.

Microsoft just suffered the worst quarter since the financial crisis in 2008, raising more concerns among investors about AI turning into a profitable venture. Still, the company is making elaborate measures to make sure it cements its position in AI, including reshuffling its Copilot leadership structure.

The company recently appointed Ex-Snap exec Jacob Andreou to lead Copilot experiences, both consumer and commercial, as an executive vice president reporting to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. This means Microsoft's AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, will now have more time to build in-house AI models for the company.

That said, it'll be interesting to see how Microsoft manages to drive interest in its new tools and potentially compete with OpenAI on an even playing field. It could use its massive hold on the market share with Windows and Office, but users are seemingly against the idea.

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