Microsoft is making it genuinely difficult to write original headlines. The company is moving so many free features behind paywalls that I’m starting to worry readers will assume I’ve published the same article twice.

Just this week, I've covered Microsoft Whiteboard requiring a Microsoft Business account, meeting preparation in Outlook needing a Microsoft 365 Copilot license, and Microsoft getting rid of Copilot Podcasts without offering any way to download previously created content.

Now, Deep Research in Copilot is on the chopping block. And in a not-so-surprising move, the replacement for that feature requires a Microsoft 365 Premium subscription.

Deep Research is a Copilot feature that creates detailed reports and provides full citations. It will be retired on August 18, 2026. The successor to Deep Research is Researcher.

I wanted to run Deep Research to further detail the transition, but Copilot said it was already impossible to activate Deep Research mode. Apparently the August 18 cutoff is for full retirement but the feature is already being phased out.

Researcher and Deep Research overlap when it comes to features and purpose, but there are some differences. Researcher integrates with Microsoft 365 and is meant for business users.

Are we all just AI beta testers?

It feels like Microsoft has turned a corner in its AI strategy. After spending billions of dollars and trying to force-feed Copilot and other AI tools onto its users, Microsoft now has an idea of what people actually want. With all that data, Microsoft is trimming the fat and moving any tasty AI morsels behind paywalls.

The freemium model is not new, but it can be frustrating for users when pushed to the extreme. Companies often introduce features for free only to later evolve them into paid tools. This is especially common with smartphone apps, but it's a widespread strategy.

But requiring payment goes over easier when the paid products are better than what was once free. I'm fine paying for an app or service that's worth it, but simply shifting free features to paid subscriptions is poor form.

Microsoft should have the basic versions of features available through free apps, such as Copilot, then make better versions with more capabilities that are accessible to paid users. Right now, Copilot feels like a glorified demo or an interactive ad for what will eventually be paid products.

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Microsoft will place another meeting feature behind a paywall. Outlook's Meeting Insight feature will be retired by early September 2026. After that date, meeting insights will not appear in event details and Outlook users will not see relevant files and emails brought up by Meeting Insight.

The replacement to Meeting Insight is the "Prepare for this meeting" experience. That feature summarizes relevant content for a meeting, such as tasks and documents.

According to Microsoft, the change is being made to "provide a more intelligent and context-aware meeting preparation experience." That may be true, but it comes with the side benefit to Microsoft of requiring a paid Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

Meeting Insight within Outlook did not require a Microsoft 365 Copilot license.

Microsoft detailed the change through the Microsoft 365 Message Center (archived here):

"Microsoft is retiring Outlook's Meeting Insights by early September 2026, replacing it with Microsoft 365 Copilot's meeting preparation features for licensed users. Meeting Insights will be removed across platforms, with no action required but recommended communication, documentation updates, and user training. No compliance issues noted."

Meeting Insight in Outlook and the "Prepare for this meeting" experience are somewhat similar, but I wouldn't call the switch a one-for-one swap. Meeting Insight brings up the actual files and emails related to a meeting. The "Prepare for this meeting" experience creates a summary of relevant content.

While summaries can be useful, they are not replacements for source material. That's even more the case if users already include summaries in relevant documents and emails.

Curbing Copilot

I thought Microsoft had seen the light when it came to Copilot. The company appeared to be shifting away from the term in some spaces, such as Copilot+ PCs. Several of the latest Windows laptops are not marketed as Copilot+ PCs even if they are.

Microsoft cancelled plans to ship several Copilot-branded AI features to Windows 11 earlier this year.

But the company's near obsession with Copilot still permeates through Microsoft 365, often behind a paywall. Back in April, Microsoft started requiring a Microsoft 365 Copilot license to use Copilot Chat in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote.

Now, more functionality that was once free will require payment.

With Copilot, it always felt like Microsoft thought it had a good idea and decided to run with it everywhere. There are almost 80 distinct products labeled as Copilot, though that figure is in flux.

Heck, Microsoft had a Copilot OS in the works at one point, though it's not known if that was ever meant to see the light of day.

Now that Microsoft has thrown every type of Copilot against the wall to see what sticks, the company will start squeezing money from users where it can. Over time, I think we'll see more useful features moved behind paywalls and free equivalents removed or stripped down.

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Microsoft will soon take away your podcasts and offer no way to download them or export them. If you use the Copilot Podcasts feature, you have less than one month to listen to your created content.

Copilot Podcasts can create an audio podcast about a suggested topic. You can then listen to the created podcast within Copilot on the web or the Copilot apps for iOS or Android, at least until August 18, 2026. On that date Microsoft will retire the Copilot Podcasts feature and cut off all access to any podcasts created with the tool.

In a support document about the upcoming retirement, Microsoft specifies that all users who have podcasts in Copilot are affected and that none of the content will be accessible after the cutoff date.

Strangely, Microsoft will not provide a way to export podcasts or save them in any way; the content will simply disappear.

Losing access to digital content

This is the latest example of a tech giant taking away digital content and not providing recourse to consumers. Of course, Sony taking away movies and TV shows people paid for is worse than getting rid of AI-created podcasts, but there's a clear trend emerging. Tech giants are increasingly stripping away the ability for people to control content.

Microsoft never allowed you to download Copilot Podcasts, so it would have to create that feature just to offer it ahead of the tool's retirement. To share a created podcast, you have to share a link. But it's still strange to see podcasts disappear entirely.

I doubt Copilot Podcasts was a popular feature. Honestly, it's a bit strange. I asked it to create a podcast about American football in the UK and two imaginary people went back and forth about the history of the sport.

While podcasts can be valuable for the facts they include, personality is a major factor. Listening to the AI voices discuss American football feels like a couple bots reading a Wikipedia page.

In the episode about American football, the cadence is off and feels unnatural. No one interjects or accidentally talks over the other hosts. It's an entirely sanitized synthetic podcast.

There's also no way to confirm anything stated within created podcasts. That's fine for a humorous episode, but not if you use the feature to get context on a topic. As a small example, one of the digital hosts got the name of a football federation in Europe wrong.

All that being said, if Microsoft was confident in Copilot Podcasts to ship the feature, it should be confident enough to let people keep podcasts that were created.

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It's hard to find AI optimists these days.

AI-adjacent stocks have taken a battering in recent months, with Oracle and Microsoft particularly hard hit. Microsoft's stock is down over 20% from last summer's highs, as investors increasingly worry that the firm has over-extended and misjudged the opportunities therein.

Wider questions remain about the future viability of the tech. Cheaper Chinese models are pressuring the big U.S. hyper-scalers to find new efficiencies and strategies, as firms like OpenAI, SpaceX, Palantir, and Anthropic struggle to justify their more optimistic valuations. Some of the more dire warnings suggest the rife circular investments and financing could implode, threatening not only the associated companies, but potentially the entire global economy.

Recently, I caught up with Ed Zitron, head of EZPR and the Better Offline Podcast, who has become a prominent journalistic voice in AI analysis. Zitron's industry-leading tech newsletter Where's Your Ed At has become a primary source for those navigating the complex (and shady?) financial deals these companies are weaving, cutting through the industry hype with an oft-times scathing dose of reality.

I asked Zitron specifically about Microsoft's bets in this space, as the hype train objectively begins to lose steam.

Microsoft occupies an odd space in the "AI race," if you can still call it that at this point. Why do you think Wall Street and the stock market are rewarding Google but punishing Microsoft this year?

"It’s because Microsoft is uniquely awful at having to prove its worth outside of financials, and is run by some of the most decrepit, disconnected, and directionless leadership I’ve seen in any company I’ve ever monitored.

Whenever this company has to beguile investors, it can usually just throw up big money numbers and raise the price on Microsoft Office. This time it made the mistake of actually spending cash — and man, did AI save its ass from humiliation by distracting from its Activision-Blizzard acquisition! — on something, and doing so in the loudest way possible, because saying “AI” and spending lots of money on AI was all it took to make people buy your stock.

Sadly, $200 billion or more in capex in, Satya Nadella doesn’t really have a compelling answer as to where this money is going. He mentioned on their last earnings that they’d hit a $37 billion run rate for AI - around $3 billion a month in revenue, with the vast majority of that being OpenAI’s compute spend — and it didn’t get anybody hot and heavy, so the stock has kept tanking."

"This is also because Azure has been a much bigger business than Google Cloud.

Sundar Pichai is also better at the financial tricks than Satya Nadella, and worked out a way to make circular financing more conspicuous, selling Anthropic its own chips and then getting those chips put in Google data centers so that it can get the revenue from Anthropic, who it funds, buying compute. That huge bump in remaining performance obligations was, to be clear, mostly from circular financing.

I have no idea why Satya didn’t do this with OpenAI’s spend, and I have to wonder if he doesn’t start being really blunt about how much it’s boosting Azure revenue, even though that’ll probably work to his detriment.

Anyway, Google Cloud is a younger and smaller business and thus much easier to show explosive growth in. Satya is also not very good at marketing."

Do you think Microsoft will realistically see any long-term return on investment from its data center build out? Have they completely misjudged the potential?

"So, this depends on your definition of “ROI.” I think that, long-term, this will be seen as a disastrous, horrifying misallocation of capital, the kind of thing that will potentially get Satya Nadella fired.

In the short-term, Nadella got “ROI” out of AI in that it kept Microsoft interesting, and OpenAI’s compute spend buoyed Azure’s revenues without them ever having to disclose AI’s actual contribution. It was a shiny object to show investors, which gave them a vague sense of growth.

This was always a gamble, and because Microsoft started the era, it will inevitably be harmed the most by it.

No, I do not see any ROI at scale. Microsoft has spent over $200 billion on AI capex and will probably spend anywhere from $300 to $400 billion if it continues its pace past this year. It will need to make more than $500 billion in brand, spanking new revenue, in a very conspicuous way, to make any of this feel worthwhile."

"The problem they face is that the longer this goes on, the less incremental it can be. Showing modest growth in Intelligent Cloud and Business & Productivity isn’t going to make this problem go away.

The other is that the clock starts the second they stop spending on capex, and that includes a cut of anything more than 30%. Maybe they try and spread it out, but at some point they’re gonna have to stop, because this is a ludicrous expense.

But once they do, the street will start asking them to prove that they didn’t just nuke hundreds of billions of dollars and take on a bunch of debt for no reason.

I will say this: Amy Hood is very good at her job, and likely the only reason Satya Nadella hasn’t blown up the entire company."

Microsoft's early investment in OpenAI was initially hailed. In your research, how has that partnership panned out? Reporting suggests it hasn't gone well …

"At first, OpenAI must have seemed like the best thing that happened to Microsoft since it won that antitrust trial because the judge talked to the media. It was the single-most buzzy company in the world, and it had to spend money on Azure.

Satya Nadella could say that he had backed the next big tech titan, all while capturing the entirety of its value and cloud spend. The original deal - owning all the IP, making Azure their only cloud provider, all that stuff was a masterstroke.

Except it’s very obvious that something went sour there in 2024 or early 2025, likely when OpenAI demanded Microsoft build more compute than it wanted to. It must have also become clear that owning all of OpenAI’s IP and models and being able to power their services with it wasn’t actually helping Microsoft enough to justify the capex, so they got desperate and bought Mustafa Suleyman’s crappy little company so he’d bring that DeepMind magic to Microsoft."

"Also, Sam Altman very clearly started making demands that were effectively “change the agreement to our benefit for no apparent reason,” and Microsoft embarrassed themselves making any concessions for him. I think that Satya had assumed he had full control of Altman, and when that wasn’t apparent, I think it weakened both his and Microsoft’s position.

And, if I’m honest, Microsoft has embarrassed itself with AI - substandard models, lots of noise but not a lot of actual stuff, running GitHub Copilot at a massive loss for several years, then turning on token-based billing and creating a bunch of bad blood for no measurable gain?

The partnership was great when Satya had control, and the moment he let Altman buy compute from other companies was the moment he lost it, even though it was absolutely the right thing to do."

Windows users have backlashed pretty hard against some of Microsoft's AI products, including things like random Copilot buttons and Windows Recall. Do you see Microsoft finding any realistically good and viable uses for LLMs?

"Nope! I don’t remember the last time that Microsoft made anything that was both new and good, and every “idea” that Microsoft has is literally somebody else’s! Copilot Cowork is Claude Cowork, GitHub CLI is Claude Code, Scout is Codex or some other agentic crap; it’s all the same thing in the glossy Microsoft wrapper that used to mean “good but expensive” but now means “weird and sterile.”

This is not a product company, and the only thing they seem to be able to do with talent is lay it off. Nobody wants anything they’re selling other than for the products they like to work like they used to. If I surveyed 100 people about what they’d change about Microsoft, I bet at least 30% of them would say “remove Copilot.”

For that to change would require Microsoft to make a completely different product."

What do you think the AI landscape will look like in 5 years, if you had to predict?

"These are all guesses, and I can’t append them to any time period. I’m pulling them out of thin air — I can’t see the future! Nobody can! These are things that could happen far more than they are for sure events.

1. LLMs are gone from the cloud other than for obscure GCP/Azure/AWS instances with AI GPUs for people doing very specific things, all of which cost way too much to do regularly.

Whatever LLMs survive are a boring on-device situation you run on a $100k workstation, and that’s not very common because they’re pretty expensive. That being said, this might also be what happens to the large amounts of GPUs that are left for dead after the bubble pops.

2. Eventually, the big labs have to start doing aggressive cost cuts, which up usage but up costs, or cost increases, which destroys usage. Either way, growth is slowing because of token-minimizing, and it’ll accelerate and eventually break the companies."

"OpenAI dies or gets absorbed into Microsoft, who jacks up the prices and unwinds the business. The same happens to Anthropic, which likely becomes a much smaller company that’s effectively a subsidiary of Google and Amazon.

3. Microsoft does a $5bn-$10bn write-down of GPUs and Nadella is booted in favor of Amy Hood. Maybe more!

4. The software industry enters a prolonged depression within the next few years because growth starts to stumble in one of the major hyperscalers. Remember: Anthropic and OpenAI are currently boosting the revenues of Microsoft, Google and Amazon, to a level that I really should look into!

5. NVIDIA’s revenues eventually return to the 2023 era, single-digit billions of dollars annually. I also expect some sort of write-down on their side too."

A huge thanks to Ed Zitron — now it's your turn

Thanks a ton to Ed Zitron for joining us on this piece. Be sure to check out Ed Zitron's podcast and newsletters here; both are full of incredible research and insights into the AI biz more recently, but also tech in general.

Often when I'm writing about AI, I feel like the big players are gaslighting me into believing that the tech is good enough to solve all of humanity's problems, if we'll just hang on and accept a little bit more (a lot more) compute. While it seems AI does have a role to play in parsing large quantities of data and tracking anomalies humans might miss, the "hyperscale" opportunities increasingly seem far-fetched and vague as we head through the current cycle.

Where it all ends up remains anyone's best guess. Perhaps some kind of incredible breakthrough will give AI the nuance and accuracy it needs to actually be a viable general-purpose assistant — rather than an expensive mimicry and content theft machine.

Perhaps its pairing with robotics will enable real opportunities that have so far eluded the big corps. Or perhaps the simple truth is: there's no real room for optimism here. Perhaps we've all been conned by something that seems suspiciously capable on the surface, until you actually put it to any form of real work.

What do you think? Hit the comments, let's talk.

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Microsoft's share price has slid 22% in the past year, as investors increasingly cast doubt on the firm's long-term AI strategy.

Artificial intelligence has been billed as the next coming by Big Tech, with everyone from Amazon to Google trying to figure out how to leverage the expensive technology to generate profits. The problem is, nobody is even close to having an answer.

Generative AI is incredibly costly to run, and the return on investment is unclear at best. Many companies are starting to discover that, in fact, it's cheaper and more effective to simply use human labor. Companies that previously laid off engineers in favor of AI models later found themselves crawling back to those fired, and others have put large restrictions on token expenditure as returns remain elusive.

I saw a clip on CNBC from Ed Zitron, creator of the Where's Your Ed At newsletter and host of the Better Offline podcast recently. It summarized Microsoft's AI conundrum in pro wrestling terminology — which appealed to my simple brain. His full analysis is anything but simplistic, though. It speaks to the hard reality companies like Microsoft are facing: Is any of this actually worth it?

Zitron describes the challenges of companies like OpenAI and Anthropic joining SpaceX in going public, describing how the company's financial realities betray the almost demented hype around them.

"They'd be the first to be this bad, other than WeWork, and this is so much worse than that. OpenAI burned $20.9 billion dollars in 2025. The problem with these companies is ... their margins are getting worse. Their costs increase linearly with their revenues. There's no proof they can improve their margins. No amount of specialist silicon will bring these costs down.

"We're at a point where OpenAI is pushing their IPO to 2027 because they couldn't get a trillion-dollar valuation. People are wising up to the problem of generative AI: there's not really a business there."

Zitron posits that none of the hyperscalers and companies like OpenAI and Anthropic "encourage waste," while potentially stealing ideas generated by companies using their models, citing Claude Design and Figma. Indeed, the only public company that seems to be flying on its AI hype right now is Google. I would argue that's less to do with innovating, and more because they've found a way to steal revenue from human creators via Gemini's Google Search summary box — instantaneously creating infinite, dynamic (albeit hallucinating) ad-scaling opportunities.

This wholesale content theft is not as readily available to OpenAI, Anthropic, or Microsoft. Google Search remains the dominant tool for browsing the web, and thanks to Chrome and Android, Google owns the entire stack here.

Microsoft very much does not own the entire stack. It barely owns a stack at all here.

Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI is on the verge of collapse, pending contractual obligations that will expire over the next few years. It's already ditching OpenAI's pricey models in favor of supposedly more-efficient MAI home-grown models in some products. Microsoft Copilot is already barely used, despite being baked into Windows. It languishes at lower than 10% of the market, according to estimates, far behind the likes of Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT.

CEO Satya Nadella's decision to give up on Windows Phone and internal Android projects has precluded Microsoft from any form of mobile play here. Mobile is where all new consumer tech will thrive, whether or not it's AI or something else. The historical open nature of Windows prevents it from reaching consumers with any of its products. Nobody uses Bing, Edge, or Copilot, and it's a result of Microsoft's wholesale lack of foresight.

Microsoft bet that it could provide the underlying infrastructure instead, and has spent monstrous amounts of CapEx on data centers in the past few years. But Zitron posited in a large report from May that it might be exaggerating, or perhaps even outright lying, about its data center expansion plans. Indeed, there's little evidence that Microsoft has actually expanded its capacity since 2024. Zitron tracked a variety of Microsoft-announced data center projects and found them in various states of incompletion.

Is this a signal that there's no real demand? Is Microsoft intentionally stalling and dragging out construction because it knows there's no actual ROI incoming from these projects?

AI-adjacent stocks, including SpaceX, Oracle, and Microsoft, have all been in near free-fall decline recently, as investors seem to bet that there's gross over-extension going on. Meta is also reportedly spinning up a cloud company to try and offload excess compute it had previously invested in AI specifically, despite not having any actual demand.

"The only reason Big Tech is investing in this is that they've run out of hypergrowth ideas," Zitron said, on the general AI industry. "They don't have a next iPhone, they don't have a new Google Search. They've put over a trillion, with trillions more to come, into a kind of dead-end industry. When that ends, they'll have to admit that they don't have anything else."

"In the future, I see [AI] as a boring hardware-based business, kind of the Oracle licensing hardware model. I think this is a $10 to $30 billion TAM [total addressable market] industry, pretending to be a $1 trillion industry."

"Everyone is just kind of pretending. It's the kayfabe of a tech industry that really has run out of ideas."

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Microsoft has apparently heard the complaints that make it clear not everyone wants AI in their daily meetings. An upcoming change will make it possible to disable Copilot, Facilitator, and meeting recap within Teams.

Before you get excited about vanquishing the AI features, only licensed meeting organizers will be able to toggle the features on or off.

Here's the planned timeline for the release of the controls:

• Targeted Release: We will begin rolling out early July 2026 (previously early June) and expect to complete by mid-July 2026 (previously mid-June).
• General Availability (Worldwide): We will begin rolling out mid-July 2026 (previously mid-June) and expect to complete by end-of-July 2026 (previously late June).

Microsoft sent word of the changes through the Microsoft 365 Message Center. If you're not an admin, you can read them through the Microsoft 365 Message Center Archive.

All versions of Teams will be affected by the change (desktop, web, and mobile).

Meeting AI is a collection of features within Teams. It includes Copilot, Facilitator, and Intelligent recap. Admins can disable all Meeting AI features with a single toggle or enable or disable tools individually.

While it's easy to criticize AI, and there are times for it, these Teams features can be useful. Facilitator can provide information to address knowledge gaps automatically. Intelligent recap uses AI to take notes, create summaries, and gather highlights.

But as is the case with many AI features, people want the option to disable them. The new options coming to Teams make that much easier for admins.

When used as a way to enhance the work of a person, AI can improve productivity. But when people over rely on AI, quality suffers. Earlier this year, analyst Dennis Xu joked about banning AI use on Friday afternoons.

Xu's comments were tongue-in-check, but the general idea was that people would be too lazy on a Friday afternoon to double-check work completed by AI tools.

Considering that even Microsoft researchers suggest AI chatbots get "dumber" the longer you talk to them, it makes sense to give meeting organizers simple toggles to disable AI in Teams.

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Leaked materials from 2024 have revealed that Microsoft has built a working prototype Copilot OS that is platform agnostic, derived from the Microsoft Edge web browser and runs on top of Windows or Android, focused on the web and agentic experiences.

This project is codenamed Aion, and while its status is currently unknown, the leaked materials confirm that such a project was in active development and reached a stage in which the code was functional. With all the material leaked, we have a pretty good idea about how this OS experience looked and functioned.

According to the leaked materials, Aion is a UI shell built entirely with web tech, using a modified version of the Edge web browser. The interface is Edge, but altered to include desktop-like interfaces and functionality such as a Start menu, Taskbar, and cascading windows.

The documents confirm that Aion was capable of running on top of Windows 11 as a desktop shell replacement, or on AOSP Android. There's also a third compatible OS mentioned called Win3, which sources say was a special modified version of the Windows codebase with less legacy cruft, resulting in a lighter OS experience with faster boot times, longer battery life, and better security at the expense of legacy app support.

Aion seemingly wasn't compatible with legacy Windows apps, with the leaked video mentioning it only running web apps and websites, with tight Windows 365 integration for when users need access to a legacy Windows experience.

The Aion interface was built around Copilot and agentic AI experiences. It features a familiar looking Taskbar along the bottom of the interface, where the system tray and running apps appear. It also features a Start menu, except this time it's powered by Copilot and features a Copilot icon instead of a Windows one.

The Copilot Start menu is where users go to begin tasks, browse the web, or open web apps. The entire interface is built around Copilot, with users interacting with the OS via a multi-modal omnibox that can jumpstart tasks or workflows, find files, browse the web, initiate AI chat, and open web apps.

The new Start menu provides quick access to recent websites and files, and also groups recent activites into Spaces that let you launch multiple activities at once via a single click, curated by Copilot. Web apps will run in their own floating windows like real apps do on Windows, letting users cascade, minimize, and snap them.

The Spaces that Copilot curates also appear in the Taskbar when open. These appear as buckets, highlighted in a different color to let you know that these items are all being grouped together by the AI for picking up where you left off at a later point.

Because Aion only runs web apps, it's capable of understanding the context of everything you have open using Copilot. That means Copilot as an agent is capable of completing tasks on your behalf if asked by the user, and can answer any questions about the things that are open or were recently viewed at any time.

Aion also includes a feature that lets users complete tasks while staying in the flow of chat. For example, if the user wanted to send a summary of a web page to a friend or colleague via email, users could simply ask Copilot to do that, and the agent would pull in an email draft and let the user check it over and send it without ever leaving the Copilot chat interface.

It's unclear if Project Aion is ever intended to ship, or if it'll remain an internal experiment never to see the light of day. So far, we've not seen any official confirmation that a Copilot OS is going ahead. Microsoft recently announced Project Solara, an agentic OS that runs on Windows and Android codebases that utilizes a just-in-time UI approach to generate experiences on the fly.

While not the same, perhaps Microsoft has opted to go in a different direction for its agentic OS vision.

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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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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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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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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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A newly published document has revealed that Microsoft is planning to ship Windows 11's new Ask Copilot Taskbar feature this summer, after months of testing with Insiders. The feature, which was first announced last year, will see Copilot replace the Taskbar's search box with a dynamic chat box that users can interact with at all times when enabled.

In the document, Microsoft describes the Ask Copilot feature as bringing "Microsoft 365 Copilot and AI agents directly into the taskbar and Start menu through the new Composer experience. This means faster action, less context switching, and AI that feels like a natural part of Windows."

The new Ask Copilot search experience replaces the current Windows Taskbar search UI with a floating popup that you can use to search for local files or interact with Copilot itself. In our testing, we found that the new Ask Copilot search UI was actually more accurate at finding local files and apps compared to the current Windows Search.

The document says that Ask Copilot is not yet generally available, but is expected to come mid-2026. This is subject to change however, so if the company decides that the feature needs more time in the oven, don't be surprised if it doesn't make an appearance until later in the year.

This new Ask Copilot search experience on the Taskbar will be entirely optional, and won't even be enabled by default, meaning Windows Search will still be the default and preferred search experience. Ask Copilot is something that's more targeted towards commercial and enterprise users, for employees that are signed up to Microsoft 365 and use Microsoft services for work.

For those who don't want to use Ask Copilot, Microsoft is also working on several Windows Search improvements designed to make search results more accurate and less reliable on web results. The company just recently began testing changes that prioritizes local file and app results over internet search results, for example.

Microsoft's Windows K2 initiative is even focused on reducing Copilot buttons and entry-points throughout the OS, with a focus on being more intentional about where Copilot and AI appear in the system. So if Ask Copilot is still shipping this year, that likely means the company believes that this feature is beneficial to end users.

via Windows Latest

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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 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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Microsoft Edge no longer has a Copilot Mode, but its still full of AI features that integrate with your browsing experience. Microsoft just announced changes to the desktop and mobile versions of its browser that place Copilot at your fingertips without having to swap to a dedicated mode.

Copilot Mode is being retired, but its key features are being built directly into Edge. Microsoft announced the changes in blog post.

Many features that were limited to the desktop version of Edge are now available on mobile devices as well, including Copilot reasoning across open tabs, organizing your browsing history (Journeys).

The desktop version of Edge has also gained a Study and Learn mode, a Writing assistant, Copilot quizzes, and a feature that turns tabs into a podcast.

Microsoft Edge mobile's major update

The mobile version of Microsoft Edge has been brought closer to parity with its desktop counterpart, at least on the Copilot side of things. You can now grant Copilot permission to reason across your open tabs when answering questions and gathering information.

Journeys has also made its to the mobile version of Edge. That feature organizes your browsing history by topic and lists suggested steps to take, the idea being that it can help you plan and make decisions.

The biggest addition to the mobile version of Edge is the addition of Vision and Voice support. You can now interact with Copilot and the web through voice while the AI assistant watches your screen.

The new tab page from the desktop version of Edge has also been shipped to the mobile version of the browser.

Is Microsoft Edge getting better?

Microsoft Edge is a good browser that I use frequently, but its "progress" over the years has made me look elsewhere. Standout features like the Sidebar have been displaced by Copilot, and the browser feels more bloated than ever.

When Microsoft announced the retirement of apps in the Sidebar, the company said the move was done to simplify Edge. But that simplification process has left Copilot largely untouched.

Even the end of Copilot mode does not mark the end of Copilot features in Edge. If anything, this week's changes place Copilot more in the face of users.

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Microsoft is making it easier to access Copilot in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other Microsoft 365 apps. But instead of adding a bunch of ways to access the AI assistant, Microsoft is giving users just two options.

The two main ways to access Copilot will be an icon in the bottom-right corner of the screen and through a contextual entry point like selecting text.

The streamlined approach keeps Copilot consistent across apps.

Copilot will also offer proactive suggestions from the Copilot button. Those actions will be accessible through keyboard shortcuts or hovering your cursor over the Copilot icon.

"Before you know it, Copilot will be editing your content directly from conversation," promises Microsoft in a Tech Community post.

Microsoft also updated the keyboard shortcuts that open the Copilot pane. Rather than having to press Alt + H, F, or X to open it, you can press F6. That shortcut moves focus to the Copilot button. You can then use the up arrow to navigate between suggestions.

Copilot shortcuts are being unified across Microsoft 365 apps, though the change is only rolling out to Outlook and Word at the moment. Eventually, the Microsoft 365 apps will support the below shortcuts.

People will have to wait a bit to use the Alt + C and Cmd + Control + I shortcuts in all Microsoft 365 apps. But the new Copilot button and other shortcuts are rolling out to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint and will become generally available in June.

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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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Xbox’s new CEO, Asha Sharma, is on a roll lately. After committing to improving Xbox already and, as of today, restructuring leadership, she has now taken to X (formerly Twitter) with another message for fans, stating:

“Xbox needs to move faster, deepen our connection with the community, and address friction for both players and developers. Today, we promoted leaders who helped build Xbox, while also bringing in new voices to help push us forward. This balance is important as we get the business back on track. As part of this shift, you’ll see us begin to retire features that don’t align with where we’re headed. We will begin winding down Copilot on mobile and will stop development of Copilot on console.”

It seems, or at least feels as though, Sharma has come into Xbox with a fine-toothed comb and is willing to make changes to get things back on track. This latest update shows a clear shift in priorities, especially when it comes to cutting or at least winding down features that do not align with her vision for Xbox.

For those unaware, Copilot is Microsoft’s AI companion, similar to tools like ChatGPT or Google’s Gemini. However, unlike those, Copilot has struggled to gain traction despite heavy investment.

With this change, plans for Copilot within the Xbox app are winding down, and plans to bring Copilot to console are over. Xbox Copilot would have allowed users to ask for help while playing games, but Sharma’s post suggests Microsoft is stepping away from pushing AI into Xbox for now.

For me, this signals a smart move. Sharma has just appointed new roles at Xbox, bringing in people from CoreAI, which was always going to draw some scrutiny over fears of AI overreach, so announcing the end of Copilot on console is one way to shut that down.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this move. Were you excited for Copilot on console and mobile, or, like me, are you glad to see it go?

Let me know in the comments, and be sure to take part in our poll above!

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Not content with threatening to replace your role at work or causing company layoffs, AI is taking credit for work it did not even generate. Or at least it was until Microsoft Copilot got called out.

Until recently, VS Code had been adding "Co-authored by: Copilot" to Git commits, even if Copilot had not helped at all. The behavior was caused when a pull request altered a Git extension to add the text by default.

The feature in question is meant to note when Copilot is used to create AI-generated code. It was off by default in March but swapped from off to all on April 16.

The change resulted in Copilot being added as a co-author when AI was involved in any way, even when AI had not generated code.

Even if a user had set chat.disableAIFeatures to true, the credit to Copilot was added.

Dmitriy Vasyura, the reviewer who approved that pull request, shared an apology on Hacker News:

"I am the person who approved this PR and would like to acknowledge and apologize for the mistake of turning this feature on by default without sufficient upfront validation," said Vasyura.

They clarified that the move was not made maliciously:

"There was no ill intent by evil corporation, but rather a desire to support functionality that some customers expect of VS Code w.r.t. AI-generated code. As folks mentioned here - many similar tools do this as well."

Based on the email address shared and their GitHub page, Vasyura works with or for Microsoft.

The feature is now set to off by default once again.

Despite Vasyura's assurance of no ill intent, many were upset by the change. Copilot being credited incorrectly could cause issues for developers.

User "PufPufPuf2" explained the risks of the change (emphasis added):

"My issue with this: if my intention is to never have these "co authored by " trailers in my commits, this is a sudden breaking change. What's worse, it is not immediately visible to the user. Now I could look like I use a not-company-approved AI. That's absolutely unacceptable, this could cost people their jobs."

In one comment, Vasyura clarified that the pull request was reverted due to a bug in the feature, not massive backlash over the change. A separate comment by Vasyura confirmed that the bug was caught in testing but shipped anyway.

Vasyura detailed the situation in a GitHub post. Comments replying to that post are critical.

"Automatically enabling this was bad. Then claiming it was to “fix a bug” is utterly ridiculous," said martinbean.

"We’ve seen Microsoft shoehorning Copilot into literally everything it can, so when automatically adding “Co-authored by Copilot” to commits from inside a Microsoft code editor is claimed to be an “accident”, you can understand how people just aren’t going to believe that. At all."

Earlier this year, Microsoft was accused of injecting ads into GitHub pull requests. Microsoft disagreed with the definition of an ad, referring to an insertion as a "coding agent tip."

User trust in Microsoft tools is eroding. GitHub outages have spiked since Microsoft acquired the platform and well-known developers are moving on to other tools.

This VS Code issue will likely hurt Microsoft's reputation further.

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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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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.

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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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I've covered Mozilla's long-standing feud with Microsoft for a couple of years, and it's safe to say the Firefox maker isn't exactly a fan of the tech giant's work. Now, Mozilla is throwing punches again, this time over Microsoft's push into AI.

In a new blog post titled "Old habits die hard," Mozilla argues that rather than offering Copilot in Windows 11, Microsoft pushed the AI offering to users by force. "The M365 Copilot app began auto-installing on any Windows device running Microsoft 365 desktop apps, with no prompt and no consent," Mozilla added.

Microsoft temporarily scrapped the forced rollout of the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on eligible Windows 11 PCs last month without much of an elaborate explanation. However, it will still be added to the Windows 11 Start menu and enabled by default.

Mozilla highlighted more examples of Microsoft pushing Copilot onto Windows users, including the dedicated Copilot key on Copilot+ PCs and its deeper integration into the Windows 11 Taskbar.

At the beginning of this year, Microsoft pledged to improve user sentiment around Windows 11 by bringing back fan-favorite features, like the vertical Taskbar, and reducing where Copilot and its integrations appear across the OS. Yesterday, Microsoft started reducing Copilot's appearance in Windows 11 by removing it from Notepad.

Mozilla argues that user backlash sparked Microsoft's abrupt shift in intent with Copilot — "they’re really admitting that they made repeated choices to serve their business over their customers."

Perhaps more concerningly, the company says this isn't Microsoft's first example of dark and deceptive design patterns fashioned to force behaviors that help the bottom line. In 2024, Mozilla released a report suggesting that Microsoft doesn't give Windows users real freedom of choice when selecting the default browser on Windows 11.

Since then, Mozilla says Microsoft has only escalated its use of dark patterns to further its cause and has provided a comprehensive list, as highlighted below:

• The Windows Search bar, embedded in the taskbar on both Windows 10 and Windows 11, is hardcoded to only open Microsoft Edge, regardless of your default browser.
• Windows has not implemented a true device migration system, like we see with Android, iOS, and MacOS, where your apps, settings and data are all reflected on your new device when you buy a new computer. Instead, the defaults are changed back to Microsoft’s own products. 
• Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Teams by default ignore your default browser selection and open links directly in Edge.
• Windows does not offer a simple prompt that other browsers can trigger asking to become your default browser. Instead, other browsers have to direct you to Windows settings and hope you finish the multi-step process.

Should Microsoft introduce a killswitch for Copilot integrations?

Mozilla painted a vivid picture of what "genuinely useful" AI integrations should look like. Simply put, AI that works on your terms. The company pointed to Firefox’s AI enhancements, which, as it highlighted, are made for people, not just because they can increase profit.

Mozilla seemingly tooted its own horn, indicating that Firefox puts user choice first, which is why version 148 introduced an AI killswitch designed to block all artificial intelligence features from interfering with the browsing experience.

Mozilla warns that if tech giants like Microsoft keep controlling users and only respond when backlash becomes overwhelming, they’ll end up dictating the narrative and shaping public expectations of technology."It tells people that their only real move is to complain until, hopefully, the company relents," Mozilla added.

The company also indicated that this makes it harder for alternatives to compete on an even playing field. Windows Central has reached out to Microsoft for any comments.

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In 2024, Microsoft announced that upcoming Windows PCs will be equipped with a dedicated Copilot key, branding it the "most significant change to the Windows keyboard" in 30 years as part of its then-massive Copilot+ PC campaign. While it was possible to remap the dedicated Copilot key in Windows 11, Microsoft temporarily scrapped that option to avoid bugs.

Now, in the past, I've made it clear that I'm not a big fan of the Copilot key. Though Microsoft is yet to reinstate the option to remap the key, developers are constantly developing utilities like NoCopilotKey, which basically allows you to remap it back to its original purpose — the right‑side CTRL key.

Over the Easter weekend, I bumped into an absurd user-made Windows app on Reddit, which lets you get a bit whimsical with your touchpad and keyboard. TypeFart (seriously) is a small Windows app that plays a fart sound on every keypress and other weird sounds when you use the touchpad — but you aren't going to get this kind of childish comedy for free.

You can either an $2.99 annual subscription or make a lifetime purchase for $4.99. Both plans basically share the same offerings, including full keyboard sounds and new effects. However, the annual subscription ships with more features, including priority for community feature requests, and future sound packs and effects.

The app ships with four different flavors: fart, funny, keyboard, or sexy. You can mix and match the sounds based on your preference. It dwells in Windows 11's system tray, which means you don't have to worry about your Taskbar getting cluttered.

I made my keyboard fart every time I type and now I can’t stop laughing from r/windowsapps

And, as highlighted by the app's developer in the FAQ section, TypeFart doesn't drain your laptop's battery because "it uses minimal CPU and RAM. It just listens for input events — no heavy processing involved." Good. I don't want any lag just to have my Copilot key (or any other, for that matter) provide some comic relief.

One downside is you can’t assign a unique sound to a specific key, so it's all absurdity or none at all. Still, it would be interesting if this became possible through future community feature requests.

I haven't subscribed to the app yet, but it's something I'm considering just for the fun of it. I mean, what's life without a little bit of whimsy against all the seriousness?

Copilot isn't "for entertainment purposes only?"

Late last week, Microsoft Copilot gained some traction for all the wrong reasons. Microsoft's terms of use for the AI chatbot indicated that Copilot is meant for entertainment purposes only. "It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk," the documentation warned.

However, Microsoft quickly dismissed the controversy that was rapidly building across social media, suggesting that it wasn't confident in its offering.

It's worth noting that Microsoft plans to improve the general sentiment around Windows 11 in 2026. Some of these efforts are already in play, including the return of the fan-favorite movable Taskbar. There are also plans underway to reduce where Copilot and its integrations appear in the operating system.

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I knew I wasn't the only one who felt like Microsoft is slapping Copilot branding across too much of its tech stack. How many Copilot offerings exist in Microsoft's ecosystem? It's even more than you might think.

AI sleuth Tey Bannerman recently found 78 distinct products, features, and services named Copilot after combing through Microsoft’s documentation, marketing, and launch materials (via Tom's Hardware). Interestingly, Copilot says there are around 95 to 120+ Copilots.

The number has surged to at least 80 after Gaming Copilot and Microsoft Dragon Copilot joined the fold. "What happens when you name everything Copilot?" added Bannerman.

“Apps, features, platforms, a keyboard key, an entire category of laptops - and a tool for building more Copilots." Admittedly, it's quite taxing to try to stay on top with these tools, especially if there might be other products and services with similar branding in the pipeline.

Bannerman argues that most AI companies prefer renaming products over rebuilding them, since it’s faster. "Stamping 'AI' on what already exists will always feel more efficient than stepping back and asking what a genuinely transformed experience would look like."

Perhaps more interestingly, Microsoft was recently on the spot after Copilot's terms of use language went viral, suggesting that Copilot is meant for entertainment purposes only. However, the company dismissed the phrasing as legacy language from when Copilot originally launched as a search companion service in Bing.

"The Copilot metaphor is almost too perfect," indicated Bannerman. "A copilot is supposed to mean one trusted partner who helps you get where you're going. 78 of them in the cockpit with no flight plan is just turbulence."

Is Microsoft flying with too many Copilots?

You know what they say about too many cooks. Microsoft's AI strategy feels a bit all over the place right now, though it is getting its act together in Windows 11 by reducing where Copilot and AI experiences appear in the operating system.

As early as 2024, Microsoft Insiders were already complaining about the company's AI strategy: "There's a gap between the ambitious vision and what users are actually experiencing. Internally, we're calling it growing pains. We are building the plane as we fly it."

Interestingly, the report further claimed that Microsoft outsources support from third-party AI vendors to make its AI-powered apps work. A high-ranking Microsoft executive even indicated that most Copilot-themed products are gimmicky.

Another Microsoft employee corroborated the sentiments, indicating that the tool"works really darn well at sharing information that the customer doesn't want to share or didn't think it had made available to its employee, such as salary info." Perhaps more concerningly, the staffer indicated that it could potentially take years for Microsoft to fix this issue.

According to one Microsoft Insider, "There is a delusion on our marketing side where literally everything has been renamed to have Copilot in it. Everything is Copilot. Nothing else matters. They want a Copilot tie-in for everything."

Microsoft's complicated OpenAI partnership has seemingly made things worse, with some insiders suggesting that it has turned it into an overnight glorified IT department for the hot startup. That, and a former Microsoft executive claims that the partnership has contributed to the death of products like Azure Cognitive Search, Azure AI Bot Service, and Kinect DK.

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Over the weekend, Microsoft Copilot was, once again, trending for the wrong reasons. Microsoft’s terms of use for the AI-powered tool (which was seemingly last updated on October 24, 2025) indicated that: "Copilot is for entertainment purposes only. It can make mistakes, and it may not work as intended. Don’t rely on Copilot for important advice. Use Copilot at your own risk."

Copilot's terms of use have sparked controversy across social media, with some suggesting that Microsoft isn't confident in its offering and that the language could be a cover story to save face in case things go wrong.

However, a Microsoft spokesperson speaking to PCMag dismissed the claims: "The phrasing is legacy language from when Copilot originally launched as a search companion service in Bing. As the product has evolved, that language is no longer reflective of how Copilot is used today and will be altered with our next update."

Interestingly, this disclaimer isn't unique to Microsoft Copilot. As highlighted by our sister site Tom's Hardware, it's consistent across other AI chatbots. For instance, OpenAI's terms of use indicate that "You accept and agree that any use of outputs from our service is at your sole risk, and you will not rely on output as a sole source of truth or factual information, or as a substitute for professional advice."

It's evident that generative AI is a tough industry to venture into, particularly because of its ever-evolving nature and the vast resources required to keep up with trends. Wall Street experts and analysts recently warned that investor interest in the category is rapidly waning, citing Big Tech's inability to map out a clear path to profitability.

While announcing Microsoft's financial earnings report for FY26 Q2, CEO Satya Nadella indicated that Copilot's daily user base has grown “nearly 3x year-over-year.” However, a separate report revealed that only 3.3% of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 users who interact with Copilot actually pay for it.

Late last month, the tech giant lost approximately a quarter of its value in the first three months of the year, its steepest quarterly drop since the 2008 financial crisis. However, the company isn't giving up on its AI ambitions as it already has elaborate plans to invest about $146 billion in infrastructure in 2026, which is approximately twice last year’s $88 billion.

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AI PCs featuring a specialized Neural Processing Unit (NPU) for on-device AI work are becoming ever more common. While Copilot+ tools built into Windows 11 are a primary use case for your PC's NPU, last week I put together a list of third-party apps that also make good use of the AI hardware.

In that piece, I failed to mention one important aspect of AI apps. As pointed out by 12-year Microsoft MVP Lance McCarthy in response to my app roundup, Microsoft's Windows AI APIs "make using the NPU reaaally easy."

As it turns out, McCarthy was one of the first developers to use Windows AI APIs in the Windows App SDK (a unified set of APIs and tools used to build apps for Windows 11).

McCarthy provided a link to his blog post explaining exactly how you, too, can start using Windows AI APIs in your app development. All with "no cloud APIs or fees, no REST calls, and no custom onnx model."

As explained in the blog, apps developed under these conditions come with one requirement: that the user has a Copilot+ PC with a capable NPU inside. Makes sense, and as I explained above, there's a good chance you're already using a capable AI PC if you purchased a new laptop in the past year or so.

McCarthy calls out several AI tools that are "available out-of-the-box". Phi Silica is a local language model that offers many Large Language Model (LLM) features, albeit at a local level running on an NPU.

AI Text Recognition, aka optical character recognition (OCR), is another tool that can identify characters, words, lines, and text boundaries, allowing the conversion of documents into searchable text.

AI Imaging is a set of tools that can scale and sharpen images, give image descriptions, extract objects from images, and erase objects within images. And, last but not least, Windows Studio Effects can be fairly easily implemented in your app to improve camera and audio quality.

Adding AI to a Windows app is way easier than I thought

McCarthy's blog highlights an example of how these tools can be implemented with great effect during app development.

McCarthy is the developer behind the Xkcd Viewer app, available directly from the Microsoft Store or from GitHub. Realizing that the app, which lets you view any xkcd comics with saving and sharing features, wasn't great for the visually-impaired, McCarthy added AI-powered image descriptions to the app.

👉 Get started building an app with Windows AI APIs

As he explains, simply adding text readouts doesn't exactly convey the proper message in a comic like xkcd that relies so heavily on artwork.

McCarthy adds that the modification took only about 10 minutes, yet adds a ton of value. There's a lot more information about the dev process in McCarthy's blog, and it's a great read even if you're a dev dummy like yours truly.

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Microsoft is doubling down its efforts in the generative AI landscape with new in-house AI models, including "MAI-Transcribe-1". It's an advanced transcription model designed to deliver state-of-the-art speech-to-text accuracy across 25 of the world's most spoken languages, making it a great candidate for meetings, closed captioning, or other forms of dictation.

MAI-Transcribe-1 will be available on Microsoft Foundry alongside MAI-Voice-1 and MAI-Image-2: "With this launch, MAI models will become broadly available for commercial use for the first time, enabling customers to evaluate and build with models across transcription, voice, and image generation," Microsoft says.

Microsoft says MAI-Voice-1 ships with hyper-realistic speech generation capabilities that preserve the speaker's identity across long-form content with emotional range. It ships with a new voice-prompting feature that can create custom brand voices from just one minute of audio.

Plus, MAI-Image-2  is Microsoft's new text-to-image generation model, which excels at natural lighting, accurate skin tones, and clear in-image text. What's more, it had ranked among the top three on the Arena.ai text-to-image leaderboard.

So, is Microsoft building its own AI camp?

It's no secret that Microsoft heavily relies on OpenAI's AI technology, which it has heavily integrated across its tech stack. However, the tech giant has openly criticized the ChatGPT maker's GPT-4 technology, citing that it's too expensive and slow to meet consumer needs.

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, Microsoft's AI CEO, 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.

Last month, Microsoft made some major changes to its Copilot leadership structure, splitting the division into four pillars: Copilot experience, Copilot platform, Microsoft 365 apps, and AI models.

Related: Microsoft faces its worst quarter since 2008's financial crisis because of AI

Ex-Snap exec Jacob Andreou will lead Copilot experiences, both consumer and commercial, as an executive vice president reporting to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Consequently, Microsoft's AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, will now double down on building in-house AI models for the company.

I guess Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was onto something when he predicted that Microsoft wouldn't use OpenAI's technology in the future, following the announcement of the ChatGPT maker's now-abandoned $500 billion Stargate project designed to facilitate the construction of data centers across the United States.

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Microsoft recently announced that "Copilot Cowork" is now available via its Frontier program. It's designed to help you delegate and handle a wide range of tasks at work, including creating plans and reasoning across your tools and files.

Availability was previously limited to a few users in Research Preview, but it has now shipped to the Frontier program, which means Microsoft 365 customers can opt in to the experimental feature before it ships more broadly.

Users can ask the AI-powered Copilot Cowork to initiate multiple tasks simultaneously and manage them via a new dashboard. It's worth noting that the new Copilot Cowork experience is powered by Anthropic's Claude Cowork.

"With skills from Claude and Microsoft built in, such as calendar management and daily briefing, Copilot Cowork can handle everything from one-off tasks to repeatable workflows like a monthly budget review," Microsoft added.

Copilot Cowork should be available via Microsoft's new 365 E7 AI subscription tier for $99/user/month. It'll be interesting to see whether the new subscription tier delivers value with better discounts following the new additions to the package.

Alongside shipping Copilot Cowork to more users via its Frontier program, Microsoft has made major improvements to its Researcher AI agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot. The AI agent will now have access to both OpenAI and Anthropic’s models, enabling it to tackle complex tasks more effectively by analyzing and synthesizing information across diverse sources.

As such, users can expect more accurate, insightful, and helpful responses to their queries. Additionally, Researcher is also getting a new feature called Critique, which will leverage different models from Anthropic and OpenAI to separate generation from evaluation. "One model plans the task and creates an initial draft, while a second model focuses on refinement, acting as an expert reviewer before the final report is produced," Microsoft added.

Plus, Researcher is also getting a new "Model Council" selection, which will let users compare responses from different models side by side. This will allow users to see where the models agree and disagree. "It’s like having multiple researchers at your fingertips."

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Microsoft may have committed to reducing microslop in Windows 11, but the tech giant seemingly forgot to CC GitHub about the initiative. A software developer named Zach Manson shared that Copilot injected an ad into a pull request on GitHub.

According to Manson, one of their team members used Copilot to correct a typo in a pull request. Copilot did fix the typo, but it also added an ad for Copilot and Raycast in the pull request description.

"⚡ Quickly spin up Copilot coding agent tasks from anywhere on your macOS or Windows machine with Raycast," reads the pull request. Text preceded by an emoji is a common trope that appears within content generated by Copilot.

Manson said of the addition, "This is horrific. I knew this kind of bullshit would happen eventually, but I didn't expect it so soon."

An investigation by Neowin sheds light on what likely caused the text to appear. While the message mentions Raycast by name, it appears Copilot is the tool injecting the text.

Searching for the phrase that appeared in Manson's pull request shows over 11,000 instances of the same text in pull requests on GitHub.

The markdown of pages with that text include the phrase, "START COPILOT CODING AGENT TIPS." It appears Copilot is adding "tips" to pull requests that promote the AI tool.

There is also a chance that Raycast is the culprit here. Raycast has a Copilot extension which could inject text promoting Raycast and Copilot.

Martin Woodward, Vice President of Developer Relations at GitHub explained on X that Copilot was able to add product tips to pull requests on GitHub, but that the behavior has since been disabled following feedback.

GitHub's controversial connection to AI

The Microsoft-owned GitHub is connected to AI in several ways, some of which are genuinely useful. GitHub Copilot can improve productivity, help find bugs, and streamline the development process.

But the tool was trained partly on code hosted in GitHub, which upset some users. Microsoft has updated its GitHub Copilot usage policy to specify that inputs, outputs, code snippets, and associated context in GitHub will be used to train Microsoft's AI models.

That change will affect Copilot Free, Pro, and Pro+ users (business and enterprise users are unaffected).

There is an option to opt out of having GitHub data train Microsoft's models.

Ironically, if Copilot injects ads into pull requests and then GitHub data is used to train Microsoft's AI models, we'll see AI being trained on AI.

That loop can be dangerous. In the early days of Google Bard and Bing Chat, the AI tools made it look like I shared fake news by listing my article as a source, despite the fact my report claimed the exact opposite of what the AI tools claimed.

If AI feeds AI, drift can occur. Without proper grounding, mistakes can perpetuate and shift into further error.

Maybe we'll see a future in which AI promotes ads by accident after it has been trained on code samples that include injected ads.

What's an ad anyway?

Martin Woodward, Vice President of Developer Relations at GitHub, shared a statement with Windows Central regarding the tips added to GitHub pull requests:

"GitHub does not and does not plan to include advertisements in GitHub. We identified a programming logic issue with a GitHub Copilot coding agent tip that surfaced in the wrong context within a pull request comment. We have removed agent tips from pull request comments moving forward."

I believe Microsoft and general users disagree on the definition of an ad. Even when admitting that the tips suggesting Copilot appeared in pull requests, Woodward referred to the text as a "coding agent tip."

As noted above, the phrase, "START COPILOT CODING AGENT TIPS" appears in a search of pull requests 11,000 times. If you define that type of tip as an ad, GitHub already includes thousands of ads.

Even Woodward's statement has a different tone than his X post on the topic. Woodward said "the beaviour became icky" on X and added that they "disabled product tips entirely thanks to the feedback."

The fact that Microsoft could "disable product tips entirely" suggests that the feature was something the GitHub team knew about and could work on, even if the exact way it appeared in pull requests was deemed "icky."

I expected that the definition of an ad would come into play with this story, so I shared a poll about the topic in the original version of this piece. Early voting shows that the vast majority of participants believe the tips are ads, though the poll has a small sample size at the moment.

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In case you missed it, an update launched in January (for Windows 11 Insider Preview Build 26220.7535) to Microsoft's Dev and Beta Channels, allowing admins to uninstall the Copilot app on managed Windows 11 devices (recently resurfaced by PCMag via an earlier article from our friends at Tom's Hardware, but not particularly breaking news).

Microsoft has undoubtedly faced harsh criticism and backlash for forcing Copilot integrations across Windows 11. While it has been possible to remove the Copilot chatbot app from individual consumer Windows 11 PCs for some time, some admins still weren't able to mass-uninstall the tool across a fleet of devices. Well, at least until recently.

Then again, it's no easy feat. Admins will need to enable a new "RemoveMicrosoftCopilotApp" policy to uninstall the Copilot app. It's worth noting that this is limited to Enterprise, Pro, and EDU SKUs, and users can also install the Copilot app in Windows 11 again if they really want to.

Admins also need to ensure each of their respective devices meets certain thresholds:

• Microsoft 365 Copilot and Microsoft Copilot are both installed
• The Microsoft Copilot app was not installed by the user
• The Microsoft Copilot app was not launched in the last 28 days

Microsoft is relaxing its Copilot integrations

At the start of the year, Microsoft announced its commitment to improving overall user sentiment toward Windows 11 in 2026. The company has already highlighted some of its plans, including the return of a movable and resizable Taskbar, reducing where Copilot and AI experiences appear, allowing users to postpone updates indefinitely, and even dropping the forced Microsoft Account requirement during setup.

PC enthusiasts can even look forward to a more consistent dark mode in Windows 11, though no timeline has been set for its rollout to legacy apps across the OS.

Microsoft even earned itself a new (unwanted) nickname — microslop. It came after CEO Satya Nadella pleaded with users to stop calling artificial intelligence "slop" in 2026: "We have moved past the initial phase of discovery and are entering a phase of widespread diffusion," Nadella added. "We are beginning to distinguish between “spectacle” and “substance.”

The executive's plea seemingly had the opposite effect, sparking outrage, mockery, and backlash from users across social media. Some even developed a Chrome extension that turns every mention of Microsoft into microslop across the internet.

Nadella admitted that AI needs to prove its worth sooner rather than later, or big tech could lose public support "to actually take something like energy, which is a scarce resource, and use it to generate these tokens."

While the ability to completely uninstall Copilot in all its forms across Windows 11 seems somewhat limited right now, I hope Microsoft gives users more control over the option, potentially making it easier to uninstall (or install) the integrations with a single click.

Personally, I'd argue that Microsoft is flying a sinking ship with too many "Copilots" for its AI strategy in Windows to even make sense. As Microsoft ramps up its efforts to improve Windows 11, it will be paramount for the company to make it easier for users to uninstall all instances of Copilot and disable its integrations across the operating system if we choose to.

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Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Microsoft's Chief Diversity Officer, is set to leave the company on March 31, 2026. She's leaving the company to take on a new role as a chief people officer elsewhere, starting next month.

McIntyre will be replaced by Leslie Lawson Sims under a new title, Microsoft VP of People & Culture, and will be responsible for "accelerating the people team and shaping culture across the enterprise" (via Business Insider).

Amy Coleman, who became Microsoft's Chief People Officer in March 2025, indicated that: "We're in a time when technology, the way we work, and our org structures are all evolving. The pace of change is exceeding what our current operating model and decision rhythms were built for. We're no longer being asked to scale for stability; we need to scale for adaptability and help set a new pace."

Coleman is also responsible for Microsoft's 3-day return-to-office (RTO) plan for employees working within 50 miles of a Microsoft office late last month. While the reasoning behind this move was that employees tend to work best when collaborating in person, it's making traffic in Seattle unbearable during rush hours.

Interestingly, the major changes in Microsoft's HR department come as the company strives to keep up with the AI hype, especially in terms of funding and development of products.

Coleman indicated that Microsoft is going through an "AI transformation." However, it's unclear how the company's AI efforts are related to its HR department.

While speaking to Windows Central, a Microsoft spokesperson indicated:

“As technology and the way we work at Microsoft continue to evolve, we are transforming our people function so Microsoft remains a place where our employees can do their best work. The organizational updates we are making today align closely to our business priorities, and help us work more closely across teams, move faster, and simplify how we operate in support of our employees and customers.”

However, the company declined to comment on how AI is being leveraged within HR specifically.

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Microsoft's commitment to make Windows 11 better through major performance improvements and an overhauled user experience has been lauded by enthusiasts, including former Windows development lead Mikhail Parakhin, who also used the opportunity to talk about a project that unfortunately never got the chance to see the light of day.

"So glad Pavan is restarting this push! Back in the day Jeff Johnson and I had this 20/20 project: reducing Windows' idle memory consumption and the fresh install size on disk by 20%," indicated Parakhin. "We never got to finish - great to see this focus on fundamentals again."

To that end, it's still unclear whether the 20/20 project is part of Microsoft EVP of Windows & Devices, Pavan Davuluri's plan to improve Windows 11's user experience and performance.

The software giant announced significant performance improvements coming to Windows 11, including reduced resource usage to free up more power for active tasks and enhanced memory efficiency that lowers the system’s baseline footprint, giving your apps more capacity to run smoothly.

However, it didn't get into specifics and whether Parakhin's project to reduce both the idle memory usage and installed disk size of Windows 11 by 20% were part of these efforts.

That said, Microsoft's move feels perfectly timed, especially with memory and storage prices skyrocketing. It remains to be seen if the company will actually make good on its promises.

2026 feels like it's off to a great start for Windows 11 users. Over the past week, the software giant has made major announcements about how it plans to overhaul Windows 11's user experience.

They include returning the capability to move and resize the Taskbar, reducing where Copilot and AI experiences appear in the operating system, allowing users to postpone updates indefinitely, and even dropping the forced Microsoft Account requirement during setup.

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As part of Microsoft's broader plan to double down on generative AI, the company recently hired Ali Farhadi, former Ai2 CEO and Xnor.ai co-founder, as corporate vice president, who will work under Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman (via Business Insider).

Just last week, the tech giant split Copilot's system into four pillars: Copilot experience, Copilot platform, Microsoft 365 apps, and AI models.

The changes also resulted in significant changes in Microsoft's Copilot leadership, with Jacob Andreou, a former Snap executive, being promoted to an executive vice president in charge of the consumer and commercial Copilot experience, reporting to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Additionally, Ryan Roslansky, Perry Clarke, and Charles Lamanna will lead Microsoft 365 apps and the Copilot platform, who will also report to Nadella. The move seems to be centered around creating more time for Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman to focus on developing superintelligence and in-house AI models.

According to Nadella:

"Mustafa Suleyman and I have been working towards this plan for some time, and he will continue to lead this high ambition work, reporting to me. Mustafa is uniquely qualified to drive this forward, with his deep focus and commitment to advancing the frontiers of model science, while also ensuring that human control, agency, and economic opportunity remain at the center of these advancements."

Mustafa Suleyman indicated that superintelligence is the foundation for Microsoft's future as a company. This potentially explains why Microsoft has been restructuring leadership in its Copilot and AI experiences division. "The next phase of this plan is to restructure our organization to enable me to focus all my energy on our Superintelligence efforts and be able to deliver world-class models for Microsoft over the next 5 years," added Suleyman

Elsewhere, Microsoft highlighted plans to re-evaluate its AI strategy in Windows 11 by reducing where Copilot and AI experiences appear across the operating system as part of its broader plan to improve user sentiment around the OS.

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Microsoft has been caught slacking. Despite its trillion-dollar market capitalization, the tech giant used AI-generated images in an official Windows Learning Center blog post, which is supposed to be promoting Windows 11 features.

As noted by Windows Latest, the Copilot‑generated images contained glaring errors — most notably, they incorrectly showed two Start menus on Windows 11’s Taskbar (via VideoCardz).

It's still unclear why Microsoft opted to use AI-generated images instead of professional product shots or real screenshots. My guess is that it might be a subtle play by the company to showcase Copilot's image-generation capabilities.

I’ll admit, despite the inaccuracies in Windows 11’s interface, the image itself looks fairly polished.

However, as the outlet pointed out, Microsoft has clearly labeled these visuals as AI Art Created by Copilot, confirming they were generated by the chatbot.

💬 Are the Copilot AI-generated images in Windows 11 guides misleading?

While I only highlighted the erroneous AI-generated image with two Start menus in Windows 11's Taskbar, there are many examples in Microsoft's Windows Learning Center, which features a ton of how-to guides and explainers about Windows 11.

It's a bit concerning and unfortunate if a less tech-savvy person bumps into one of these guides while seeking some sort of assistance with their system. It's confusing, "why doesn't my Windows 11 PC not have two Start menus like the one shared by Microsoft? Is my system broken?"

I occasionally use Copilot for testing new features and surface-level research. Microsoft makes it crystal-clear that Copilot can make mistakes when launching the app. It's a bit funny that the company didn't listen to its own advice.

This week I covered a curious story where a Gartner analyst suggested banning Copilot use on Friday afternoons, arguing employees are too burnt out then to catch its mistakes. Makes you wonder if Microsoft drafts these posts on Fridays.

In January, Microsoft pledged to improve user sentiment around Windows 11 by enhancing the operating system’s experience based on feedback. The company is already delivering on that promise, reintroducing popular features like the ability to move and resize the taskbar — a capability that, in my view, should never have been removed.

Microsoft also promised to address major pain points across the OS, including reevaluating its AI strategy. Our Senior Editor, Zac Bowden, recently revealed that the company has scrapped its plans to integrate Copilot to notifications and Settings on Windows 11 as part of its broader strategy to reduce AI bloatware.

Windows Central reached out to Microsoft about the story, but the company declined about the story.

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During a talk about “Mitigating the Top 5 Microsoft 365 Copilot Security Risks” at Gartner’s Security & Risk Management Summit in Sydney on Tuesday, analyst Dennis Xu jokingly suggested banning the use of Microsoft Copilot on Friday afternoons.

He noted that by the end of the week, many users might be too lazy to double‑check whether the chatbot’s outputs are offensive, which raised his concern (via The Register).

As AI models and chatbots become more advanced, prompt engineering is increasingly vital to unlocking their full potential. So, why Friday? The analyst argued that most professionals are usually tired by this time of the week and wouldn't bother to check for errors in Microsoft Copilot's responses.

Xu floated the idea about banning Copilot on Friday afternoons while discussing the fifth risk he'd identified about the chatbot generating output that might be a tad inappropriate. While he admitted that the output might be factually correct, it may come off as toxic and offensive, making it unsuitable in the workplace or even among customers.

The analysts reiterated the importance of reviewing Copilot's output before sharing to a broader audience, and even making it a ritual. He also recommended addressing Copilot's toxic content using filters from Microsoft.

While many users seem to show a bias toward ChatGPT when comparing it to Copilot (though the growing #CancelChatGPT movement may be shifting perceptions), Microsoft has argued that its offering is superior. The company suggests that users simply aren’t leveraging Copilot as intended, pointing instead to a lack of proper prompt‑engineering skills.

💬 Is "AI fatigue" a thing?

There's no denying that generative AI is slowly but surely securing its spot in the corporate world. Tech leaders and key stakeholders heavily invested in the industry have speculated how the next-gen technology will reshape the future. especially the job market.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates speculates that AI will replace humans for most things. At the same time, Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman recently claimed that white-collar jobs could be automated by AI and become extinct within the next 12-18 months.

Despite the threat to the job market, AI is largely seen as a productivity booster in the workplace. However, there have been complaints from professionals, citing AI fatigue (via Business Insider).

While AI seemingly makes people more productive, it has also made their jobs harder and left them drained. A recent study by Microsoft researchers indicated that AI chatbots get "dumber" the longer you talk to them, raising concerns about their reliability.

A separate Microsoft study revealed that overreliance on AI tools like Copilot atrophies people's critical thinking capabilities.

Do you feel fatigued when using Copilot or any other AI tools in your workflow? Share your thoughts with me in the comments.

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Microsoft is temporarily pausing automatic installations of the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on Windows devices that have the Microsoft 365 desktop client. The company hasn't explained why, and if it ever decides to move forward, the app will still be added to the Windows 11 Start menu and enabled by default.

"Automatic installation of the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on Windows devices with Microsoft 365 desktop apps, planned for December 2025, is temporarily disabled," it indicated in a Microsoft 365 message center update. "Existing installations remain unaffected." Admins can opt out of this experience via the Apps Admin Center.

Last September, the software giant announced that it would begin a forced rollout of the Microsoft 365 Copilot app across Windows devices in early December, further indicating that the process was slated to be complete by mid-December. However, Microsoft indicated that the change would not impact customers in the EEA (via Bleeping Computer).

As you may know, the Microsoft 365 Copilot app brings Copilot's AI-powered capabilities to the Microsoft 365 suite of productivity apps, including Word, Excel, and PowerPoint — intending to help users draft reports, presentations, and emails by generating content and offering editing suggestions.

Microsoft touted the Microsoft 365 Copilot app as "a centralized entry point for accessing Copilot experiences and AI-powered capabilities across Microsoft 365" when it announced its automatic installation on Windows devices.

💬 Is Microsoft subtly moving away from too many Copilot integrations?

Yesterday, we learned about Copilot's leadership shake‑up with Microsoft splitting it into four pillars: Copilot experience, Copilot platform, Microsoft 365 apps, and AI models.

Related: Microsoft 365 is paywalling most of Copilot in Office apps

Ex-Snap exec Jacob Andreou will lead Copilot experiences, both consumer and commercial, as an executive vice president reporting to Nadella, freeing up Microsoft's AI CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, to focus on developing new AI models.

Elsewhere, Microsoft also scrapped its plans to integrate Copilot into notifications and Settings on Windows 11 as part of its broader strategy to reduce AI bloatware and improve general user sentiment about the operating system in 2026.

Do you support Microsoft’s decision to pause automatic installs of the Microsoft 365 Copilot app on Windows 11? Share your thoughts with me in the comments.

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Microsoft just made some major changes to its Copilot leadership structure. The tech giant has brought together its commercial and consumer Copilot efforts and announced several roles to lead the charge to accomplish its mission of superintelligence.

Microsoft's Copilot system will have four "pillars," as described by Microsoft: Copilot experience, Copilot platform, Microsoft 365 apps, and AI models.

All the details were shared in a blog post written by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Mustafa Suleyman.

Jacob Andreou will lead Copilot experiences, both consumer and commercial as an executive vice president reporting to Nadella. Before joining Microsoft, Andreou was a Senior Vice President at Snap (the company behind Snapchat).

Ryan Roslansky, Perry Clarke, and Charles Lamanna will lead Microsoft 365 apps and the Copilot platform.

The restructure frees up a familiar face, Mustafa Suleyman, to focus on building models.

"To that end, we are bringing the Copilot system across commercial and consumer together as one unified effort," explained Nadella. "This will span four connected pillars: Copilot experience, Copilot platform, Microsoft 365 apps, and AI models. This is how we move from a collection of great products to a truly integrated system, one that is simpler and more powerful for customers."

Speaking of Microsoft's superintelligence mission, Nadella pressed the importance of Suleyman.

"Mustafa Suleyman and I have been working towards this plan for some time, and he will continue to lead this high ambition work, reporting to me. Mustafa is uniquely qualified to drive this forward, with his deep focus and commitment to advancing the frontiers of model science, while also ensuring that human control, agency, and economic opportunity remain at the center of these advancements."

Suleyman has spoken about superintelligence on several occasions, including clarifying that it won't replace humanity.

In his portion of the statement, Suleyman called the creation of superintelligence as "the foundation for our future as a company." He added that, "the next phase of this plan is to restructure our organization to enable me to focus all my energy on our Superintelligence efforts and be able to deliver world class models for Microsoft over the next 5 years."

Suleyman's new role could also help Microsoft shift away from its reliance on OpenAI. The company has already started shifted away from the startup, opening its relationship last year and working on its own models.

💬 Will Microsoft play a key role in creating a superintelligent AI system?

Superintelligence refers to an AI system that surpasses human cognitive abilities. Suleyman explained that Microsoft's vision for superintelligence would deliver "all the goodness of science and invention without the "uncontrollable risks”

But will Microsoft actually be a pioneer in AI and be part of the team that passes the superintelligence milestone? Let me know your predictions in the comments.

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Do you hate the dedicated Copilot button on your Windows 11 Copilot+ PC? Thanks to a daring third‑party developer, you can now unofficially remap it back to its original purpose — the right‑side CTRL key.

In 2024, Microsoft announced that upcoming Windows PCs will be equipped with a dedicated Copilot key, branding it the "most significant change to the Windows keyboard" in 30 years. While it was possible to remap the dedicated Copilot key in Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft temporarily scrapped that option to avoid bugs.

But this doesn't necessarily mean that you can't find alternative third-party solutions for the issue. As is the case with NoCopilotKey, which is described as "a tiny program that changes the Copilot keyboard key back into the right Ctrl key" by the developer on GitHub (via Neowin).

The developer explained that the project was inspired by Microsoft’s decision to require manufacturers to replace the right Ctrl key with a Copilot key without offering any BIOS or Windows setting to change it back.

(As always, running third-party tools may potentially harm or render your device unusable. Proceed with caution!)

Interestingly, the developer listed up to 9 different ways people use the right Ctrl key with a combination of other keys to boost productivity on their PCs, including to move the cursor to the beginning or end of a document, launch a new browser window, move the cursor between words, and more.

The developer explains in detail how the utility works till it eventually restores the right Ctrl key functionality. It's possible that many users will find this utility quite useful, especially those against Microsoft's big push for AI in Windows 11.

I'm not a big fan of the controversial Windows keyboard change, either.

I’d argue that I’m so accustomed to having the Ctrl key in that spot that replacing it with a dedicated Copilot key feels awkward and unfamiliar. I guess I’m just set in my ways.

💬 Do you ever use the Copilot key on your PC?

In 2024, Microsoft launched Copilot+ PCs alongside a handful of crazy next-gen AI features, including Windows Recall, Click To Do, Improved Windows Search, and more.

The company described the device as a sophisticated piece of hardware that ships with a dedicated NPU (neural processing unit), which is designed to perform tasks faster than GPUs and CPUs by taking on small repetitive processes so that a computer can work more efficiently when fulfilling AI-driven requests. Another telltale sign is that the device also features onboard Copilot software and a dedicated Copilot button.

While market analysts predict that PC shipment trends are on an upward trajectory, primarily due to a concoction of Windows 10's death and AI PC hype, it remains unclear if there's an actual need for a dedicated Copilot key in these devices.

However, Microsoft hasn't been shy about its Copilot+ PC campaign, using Windows 11 coupled with next-gen AI features to get users to upgrade, following Windows 10's death. It's even made bold statements like "Windows 11 PCs are up to 2.3x faster than Windows 10 PCs" .

In January, Microsoft announced its plan to improve the general sentiment around Windows 11 based on user feedback. The software giant is already making good on its promise by bringing back features like the capability to move and resize the Taskbar.

The company is also planning to address major pain points across the operating system, including reevaluating its AI strategy. Our Senior Editor, Zac Bowden, recently reported that the company has scrapped its plans to integrate Copilot into notifications and Settings on Windows 11 as part of its broader strategy to reduce bloatware across the operating system.

Do you use the dedicated Copilot key on your Windows 11 PC? Let me know in the comments.

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Microsoft has shelved plans to ship a number of Copilot-branded AI features on Windows 11 that were first announced alongside Copilot+ PCs in 2024. These features would have seen Copilot integrated into several system-level UIs such as the Settings app, notifications, and File Explorer.

These features were very briefly demoed by Microsoft EVP Yusef Mehdi on stage, and he even confirmed that the features would begin shipping later that year. But 2024 came and went, and these features never arrived, even in preview form. It's now almost two years since those features were announced, and there's still no sign of them.

According to my sources, the plan to use Copilot as an umbrella term for AI on Windows was put on the backburner not long after Windows Recall was delayed. As Microsoft scrambled to address issues with Recall, a number of other AI-features that were in the pipeline were essentially put on pause.

As things stabilized, Microsoft began bringing more AI features to the platform, but much of it was without the Copilot brand attached. Settings and File Explorer on Windows 11 now have their own array of AI features and capabilities instead.

Settings has built-in semantic search, which also suggests settings you might want to configure. File Explorer did end up getting an AI actions menu, but unlike the original Copilot version from 2024, what we have in File Explorer today hands-off to other apps, whereas the Copilot version could handle those actions "without opening an app," as stated by Mehdi.

The feature that we haven't seen in any capacity is Copilot suggestions in notifications. That feature would have seen Copilot appear in pop up notifications from apps with one-click actions such as opening a file or replying to messages. I'm told this is unlikely to ever ship on Windows as a Copilot feature now, though the concept may be revisited in the future.

Even the Windows Copilot Runtime was eventually renamed to "Windows AI APIs." If you look at where the Copilot brand appears in Windows now, much if it is tied to Microsoft 365 experiences, with less focus on Copilot being an ambient AI assistant that exists across Windows, as was originally portrayed in 2024.

When reached out for comment, a Microsoft spokesperson said the following:

"Our approach to product development is to preview with customers and evolve with feedback. Some experiences we may preview privately and update before rolling out more broadly, while others we may preview and iterate publicly with feedback from Windows Insiders. In both of these cases, features may change, be removed, or replaced over time as we gather input from customers."

People familiar with Microsoft's plans say the company is moving to reduce AI bloat across Windows 11 this year, and is striving to be more tactful about where the Copilot brand and AI experiences appear in system apps and interfaces. This is all part of a larger effort to address major criticism and concerns from users who believe Windows 11 has become bloated and enshittified with AI.

While that doesn't mean Microsoft is stripping all AI capabilities out of the OS, user will notice the company be more deliberate about where these things appear going forward. It will still exist where necessary or most useful, but these features will be optional and disable-able. The company wants people to view Windows 11 in a positive light again, and it's hoping scaling back on AI across the OS will help towards that goal.

💬 Will reducing Copilot branding and capabilities on Windows 11 help its reputation?

I'm really interested to know what you think about Microsoft's strategy when it comes to handling AI on Windows 11 right now. It's clear the company cannot continue bombarding users with unwanted AI features, and reducing where Copilot appears and what AI experiences ship is a good start.

But will this help turn the tide and improve sentiment around the OS? Let me know what you think in the comments.

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Recently, Microsoft announced Copilot Health, a separate, secure space inside Copilot that pulls together medical records, data from your wearables, and lab results, so users can get clearer, personalised explanations of their data.

Many initial reactions to this are understandable: Should I trust Microsoft with my health data? I can’t answer that for anyone else, but I do want to offer one thing the announcement didn’t: a real, personal example of how I already use Copilot as a supplement to my medical care and how it changed the course of my treatment.

How I used Copilot — the short(ish) story

For years, I’ve had intermittent pain in my upper right abdomen. It started in my teens, flared after pregnancies, and was repeatedly dismissed as hormonal. I’ve sat in out‑of‑hours clinics, been told it was “probably” related to my cycle, and left without any meaningful investigation despite the pain being nowhere near my pelvic region.

Eventually, I got fed up and started asking Copilot the kinds of questions I didn’t always feel confident asking a doctor.

It didn't leap to the worst-case scenario, as a web search engine often does, which can bring up the most sensational results. It asked follow‑ups, looked for patterns in my symptoms, and ultimately suggested I request an ultrasound. I used the phrasing Copilot suggested in my e‑consult so my GP would see exactly why I was requesting this, along with a cohesive history of my symptoms and things that had already been investigated and ticked off the list.

This all led to an ultrasound that found multiple gallstones and a long‑standing digestive dysfunction that explained the pain I’d had for two decades. My gallbladder is basically like a bag of marbles with no negative space left within it, that have been forming since I was an adolescent. The ultrasound technician even commented that he was struggling with the scan and was surprised I had been referred this late.

I’m now on a waiting list for surgery within the next 12 weeks. Throughout the process, I fed Copilot my blood tests and reports; it helped demystify the results and gave me a clearer way to talk to my doctor. I'm not great at advocating for myself when faced with a man in a white jacket.

I’m not saying Copilot diagnosed me. I’m saying it helped me ask for the right test. A test no doctor had ordered for me in twenty years.

Why this matters beyond my experience

People are already using Copilot for health questions. The usage report shows over 50 million health queries per day. Microsoft makes clear the company sees this as an extension of how people already use AI to make sense of medical information, not as a replacement for clinicians.

The product is explicitly consumer‑facing and framed as a conversation aid, with Copilot Health touted as a tool to help people prepare for appointments and translate medical jargon — something that could help you and your doctor find the next steps rather than replace clinical judgement altogether.

Those points align completely with my experience. Copilot simply gave me some tips and told me what to ask for to move my investigation along.

Trust, privacy and the tradeoffs

Concerns about data leaving its intended source are real, and I don't want to minimize that. Microsoft says Copilot Health will keep health data isolated in a secure environment and give users control over permissions, but those promises will need scrutiny as the product rolls out.

At the same time, the NHS (UK healthcare) and other public bodies have had their own data incidents, so the risk of any third party holding sensitive information is not unique to Big Tech. For me, the tradeoff is worth it. This is a tool that actually helped me get a diagnosis after twenty years, versus the abstract fear of a data breach. That’s a personal calculation for me and me alone; others will reasonably decide differently.

Our site’s reader survey and the chart we attached to our news coverage on this, so far, shows 33% of respondents said they would trust Microsoft with their health data, and 67% said they would not.

What this means for readers and clinicians

For patients, we should underestimate AI as a powerful prep tool. If it helps you clarify symptoms or phrase a request for a specific investigation, that can shorten the path to diagnosis. You can go into your appointment more prepared and more confident to be assertive and request a more targeted approach to your symptoms.

Clinicians should expect more patients to arrive with AI‑generated summaries or suggested next steps. I'm sure that while in some cases this will save time, it could create friction if the doctor disagrees, but ultimately the patient can at least have it on record that they have asked for something, and it can be documented as to why that wasn't the chosen route if the clinician distrusts the source. Either way, it changes the dynamic of the consultation.

As hyperbolic as it sounds, my experience with Copilot was life‑changing (though time will actually tell once I've been through the surgery). That doesn’t settle the privacy debate, nor does it mean Copilot Health is the right choice for absolutely everyone and every scenario, but I do fully support it as a great jumping point for better medical care.

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After nearly a full year of beta testing and a full rollout on Windows PCs and mobile devices in September, Microsoft is finally planning to release its Xbox AI assistant Gaming Copilot on consoles. Specifically, the firm is targeting "current-generation consoles," which means it's coming to Xbox Series X|S.

Microsoft made the announcement at the Game Developers Conference during a panel (thanks, GamesRadar+), confirming the publisher's intent to bring the AI helper to Xbox consoles while also noting it will continue making it available on other platforms as well.

"I'm excited to announce that later this year, we will bring Gaming Copilot to the current-generation consoles, and we will continue to bring it to more services that players are playing," said Xbox's gaming AI partner group product manager Sonali Yadav.

"We've learned a lot this past year, and appreciate all of the feedback that we've gotten from from the community," she added, grateful for all the testing Xbox Insiders have done with Gaming Copilot across PC, mobile, and most recently the Xbox Ally gaming handheld lineup.

For the unaware, Gaming Copilot is a tool that will answer questions you have about the game you're playing, and is essentially designed to be used in lieu of a traditional game guide you'd typically search for on Google or look up on YouTube. Primarily, it's an alternative to these resources you can use to help you get past a hard gameplay puzzle or segment that you're stuck on.

However, it has some other uses as well. You can ask Gaming Copilot for game recommendations based on your play history and the genres you tend to play the most, and you can also have it display information about specific gameplay achievements or account details you'd like to review.

One of the big advantages of the feature is that you can use it without leaving your game, as it's accessed through the Xbox Game Bar overlay on PC and the Command Center button on Xbox Ally devices. This makes it faster to use as opposed to Alt-tabbing or pulling out your phone and opening a web browser, with the caveat being that you're relying on an AI's data summary instead of a bespoke guide authored by an actual person.

In its current state across PC, mobile, and Xbox Ally handhelds, Gaming Copilot can be used with both text chat and voice. This is presumably how it's going to work on Xbox consoles too, though on those systems, voice will likely be what most players prefer using (typing on a gamepad controller is...not fun).

The tool hasn't garnered a ton of attention thus far, though I suspect that may change once it comes to Xbox consoles in full and isn't just relegated to Xbox Game Bar, the Xbox mobile app, and the Ally handhelds.

Notably, Gaming Copilot may be one of the farthest-along AI aids for gamers, but it's not the only one that's being worked on. Recently, an Xbox patent for a helper that takes control of your game to help you beat hard sections made waves, and Sony recently filed a patent for an "AI-generated ghost player" that could help players progress when they're stuck as well.

Oh, and about that "we will continue to bring it to more services that players are playing" part: it's unclear what else Microsoft may be looking to integrate Gaming Copilot into, but clearly, it's eager to put it anywhere it can. One such platform will surely be Project Helix, the new upcoming Xbox console-PC hybrid system.

🗨️ Will you use Gaming Copilot?

Now that Gaming Copilot is coming to Xbox Series X|S consoles soon, will you use it if you get stuck on something in the games you play? If you're on PC or Xbox Ally, have you already used the feature? If so, what did you think of it?

Let me know in the comments below, and make sure to vote in our poll as well:

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Would you trust AI with your medical information? That's the question that many will ask when seeing the announcement of a new tool from Microsoft called Copilot Health.

But I'm here to tell you that people already trust AI with their health information, so the first question many will come up with is moot — or at least not the most important question.

There are two main questions: can Copilot Health help people who already turn to AI tools, and can Microsoft be the specific company people trust with their medical data?

The fragmentation fix

Copilot Health gathers together medical data from multiple sources to provide context and battle against fragmentation. Health records, wearable data, and health history can all be brought into the tool.

Over 50 wearable devices, including Apple Health, Oura, and Fitbit, can feed data into Copilot Health. Health records from over 50,000 hospitals in the United States also provide information such as visit summaries, medication lists, and test results.

In its announcement post, Microsoft explained that "Copilot Health doesn’t replace your doctor." The company emphasized that the tool "makes every minute you have with them count more."

Data often comes into the hands of medical professionals in pieces. Copilot can gather that information together to provide context and help experts see the entire picture.

"Our health data is so fragmented. It's a bit like having your health as a puzzle, but then scattering all the pieces," said Dr. Xiao Liu, MD PhD, Clinical Research.

"Being able to join all of that gives us a more complete picture of what's affecting your health."

Copilot Health uses information from health organizations across 50 countries. Responses generated by the tool will include citations and links to source material as well as answer cards from Harvard Health.

Improving access to healthcare data

Copilot Health is also about expanding access to medical information and expertise. "If we're serious about... health as a human right, we need to have it in a forum and a platform that can reach everyone," said Dr. Vik Sounderajah, MD MSC, Clinical Product.

Copilot Health also makes it easier to find a doctor who accepts your insurance if you're in the United States.

"A well-designed AI system can combine the breadth of knowledge of a generalist physician with a deep domain knowledge of a specialist." Dr. Chris Kelly, MD PhD, Clinical Product

Gathering data and providing contextualized care can improve the quality of healthcare and streamline efficiency, which could result in more patients being seen.

People already ask the web about their health

The reality is that people are already asking AI and web tools health-related questions. I'm not here to argue about the state of healthcare systems around the world. I'm just stating a fact; people rely on the web for answers about important health questions.

Microsoft's 2025 Copilot Usage Report revealed that the company already responds to 50 million health queries per day. That's just one company. I'm sure the number is much higher if you grouped questions asked to Google and AI tools from other companies.

If people are going to rely on the web and AI tools to answer health-related questions, it's important to have tools that use reliable information and that are grounded in sound sources.

Security vs. Medical Utility

I understand and agree with concerns about feeding medical information into AI tools. Your personal health data is as private as anything about you, so there needs to be guardrails and protections in place.

If Microsoft can ensure the security and privacy of information fed into Copilot Health, it could be an invaluable tool to medical experts.

When using AI for anything, it's important to have a human confirm results and look through the data. When looking at medical information for real people, that process becomes even more important.

Microsoft's video outlining Copilot Health emphasizes a goal of getting people to the right medical experts or doctors.

Any medical insight generated by Copilot Health would be overshadowed by insecure data storage or management. Microsoft called the tool "Safe and Secure by Design" and explained that Copilot Health conversations and data are isolated from general Copilot.

Safeguards have been put in place, and encryption is used to protect data as well.

Microsoft is leaning hard on "Safe and Secure by Design" here, and while isolation from general Copilot is a start, we have to look at the track record. It’s hard to ignore that the same company asking for your hospital records is the one that’s dealt with high-profile breaches, such as those reported on by Geekwire, and zero-day exploits over the last few years.

Shortly after findings by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella penned a post titled, "Prioritizing security above all else."

That post used the same "Secure by Design" phrase that's seen in the Copilot Health announcement post. "If you’re faced with the tradeoff between security and another priority, your answer is clear: Do security," said Nadella.

🤔 Would you trust Microsoft, specifically, with your medical data?

Less than two years after that post, Microsoft is now asking people to send medical data to Copilot Health. Does Microsoft's commitment to "Secure by Design" make you comfortable enough to share your medical data with Copilot Health? Let us know in the comments below and share your thoughts about AI and healthcare.

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Yes, Copilot is still here, and Microsoft 365 (Office) is now expanding it with 'Wave 3'. If you missed the concept of its waves in the first place, they essentially refer to the batch rollouts of major features for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Wave 1 was the initial introduction of Copilot in Microsoft's Office apps, with the AI assistant first appearing in documents, emails, and presentations. Wave 2 expanded Copilot across Microsoft's ecosystem, introducing new collaboration tools like Copilot Studio and deeper integration across Microsoft 365.

Now Microsoft is moving into Wave 3, which allows users to build their own AI agents directly within Microsoft 365 apps to help with their specific daily workflows, alongside new capabilities in apps like Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Outlook (via Microsoft).

The company is also introducing Microsoft 365's premium 'E7' bundle — the "First Frontier Suite". It bundles the existing top-tier 'E5' enterprise subscription with advanced security, analytics, and compliance tools, alongside Copilot, and a new Agent 365 offering into one package.

What’s new in Microsoft 365 Copilot Wave 3?

This update brings improvements to Copilot’s chat features, allowing users to easily modify documents, presentations, spreadsheets, and emails directly from the chat interface. Plus, Microsoft is introducing Work IQ, a new intelligence layer that uses an organization’s data, collaboration history, and internal content to help Copilot better understand the context of your specific workplace.

Copilot is also adding support for additional models, including Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's GPT. Eventually, we'll see an introduction to Copilot Cowork, which is currently in preview, allowing AI agents to carry out longer, multi-step processes over time rather than responding to single prompts.

And finally, there's that new Agent 365 addition, which is essentially a management platform for organizations to monitor and govern their tailor-made AI agents. Agent 365 will release on May 1, 2026, and will cost $15 per user — that "Frontier Suite" E7 bundle will also launch on May 1, 2026, at $99 per user, including Agent 365, Microsoft Entra, Defender, Intune, and Purview.

🗨️ Will your business use these new Copilot additions?

Whether you like Copilot in Windows (Microsoft has at least eased off consumers and is no longer pushing it quite as aggressively), it's definitely here to stay on the Microsoft 365-led business side.

At least this latest software expansion could prove useful for some businesses eager to adopt agentic AI, potentially easing tedious, repetitive workloads and freeing up time for more important, human-driven tasks.

With all that said, let me know your thoughts in the comments, and make sure to take part in our poll below:

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Last week, it looked like Microsoft was getting ready to ship a new AI-powered software bundle for Microsoft 365, dubbed E7, which would include Microsoft Copilot and a new AI agent hub — Agent 365.

Well, Microsoft has now confirmed that the rumored AI-centric E7 subscription tier does exist and is slated to launch on May 1. Plus, the Agent 365 platform for managing AI agents across Microsoft 365 and third‑party services is also slated to ship to broad availability on the same date, priced separately at $15 per user per month.

The software giant describes the complete E7 bundle as "the First Frontier Suite," which will cost $99/user/month. Previously, I had described Microsoft's new AI-powered package as "the E5 enterprise tier, but with AI offerings on top."

Since Microsoft’s AI‑powered E7 subscription tier includes both Microsoft 365 Copilot and Agent 365, the $99 price point might feel like a bargain, or, as The Register's reporting on Gartner's research puts it, “priced below purchasing these capabilities à la carte.”

💬 Will the new tier offer value to Microsoft 365?

According to business research firm Gartner, the discount on Microsoft's new E7 subscription tier isn't as impressive as it might seem, as it only trims 13.2%. Its analysts believe that "bigger bundles should get bigger discounts."

Perhaps more interestingly, it says that Microsoft 365's E3 and E5 subscription tiers give more value for money with better discounts regarding what they have to offer.

In that, Microsoft seemingly shipped Microsoft 365's new AI-powered subscription tier to meet the need for a plan "with multiple tools stitched together" over what Microsoft 365 E5 has to offer.

Microsoft 365 E7 ships with productivity and security apps, Microsoft Copilot, and its new AI agent hub right out of the gate. Still, skepticism surrounds the subscription tier, particularly the Agent 365 offering, which Gartner calls "a work in progress with limited net new functionality to justify its $15 pupm [sic] price point."

Microsoft’s $99 E7 premium tier launches May 1. Do you think it’s worth the price? Share your thoughts in the comments!

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