Microsoft is holding a special event about Surface and artificial intelligence
Microsoft’s big AI plans: Where are we going? Yusuf Mehdi’s appointment as consumer marketing head of Windows and Surface
Just days before the event, the former head of Windows and Surface resigned in a surprise announcement. We’ll now see how the new leaders of Windows and Surface push ahead with Microsoft’s big AI plans
Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s consumer marketing head, will now take on the responsibility of leading the Windows and Surface businesses and products externally. Crucially, Mehdi’s job title hasn’t changed with Panay’s departure here, so Microsoft no longer has a chief product officer.
He worked on product management for both Internet Explorer and Windows before leading the entry into search with Bing. He has been at Microsoft for more than 20 years and has been involved in a variety of different product launches. He was involved in Surface, Windows 10 and the HoloLens headset.
It’s unlikely that we’ll see Microsoft tease its plans for AI-powered features in Windows 12, which is expected next year, but many of the new Surface and Windows AI features will lay the groundwork for Microsoft’s AI focus on Windows. “If you want to do everything on Windows, it’s going to be done with Artificial Intelligence, quite literally.” said Panay earlier this year, so we’re likely to hear the beginning of Microsoft’s work toward that reinvention.
Expectations for the Surface Beyond Windows, iOS, and Android in the Pre-Panay Era and Outlook for Surface Laptop Studio 2
The new experiences team will include Microsoft executives who have experience in product management, engineering and cross-devices work, as well as Mikhail Parakhin, who has been focused on Bing chat.
Microsoft also turned to AI to help power its Surface smart camera recently, so there’s a chance we might see other accessories that leverage AI smarts for Surface.
Perhaps this uncertainty around the PC business after a big boom in sales has led Panay back to just wanting to build devices rather than the complicated task of running Windows and gearing it up for AI and a future in the cloud.
Microsoft is rumored to have scrapped plans for a dual-screen Surface Duo 3, years after effectively canceling its Windows-powered Surface Neo dual-screen device. It isn’t clear what the future holds for Microsoft’s ownAndroid efforts. The original Surface Duo just reached end of life with just two Android version updates. Microsoft’s mice, keyboards, and webcams have also been discontinued in favor of Surface accessories.
Microsoft also invested heavily in Windows 11 during the pandemic and the PC sales boom, but Surface and devices revenue has been battered this year as PC shipments experienced big declines. Before the PC pandemic boom, Nadella was also looking at a future beyond Windows, iOS, and Android. He joked in January 2020 that Windows could be called “Azure Edge” in the future to make it clear that cloud services are the biggest hardware business at Microsoft.
Microsoft is going to hold a special event in New York City later this week where it will debut three new Surface devices and new features for Windows, Bing, and more.
WinFuture reported last week that it will be the first Surface device to ship with 64GB of RAM. Microsoft appears to be mostly improving the internal specs, while adding a USB-A port for existing peripherals and a microSD card for storage expansion. Microsoft is expected to start selling the Surface Laptop Studio 2 on October 3rd.
Microsoft Expects New Artificial Intelligence Features for Windows Embedded Apps and Bing Chat for End-to-End Users
I’m expecting Microsoft to detail more than just Copilot, though. The Snipping tool and Photos app have recently updated with useful features for copying text from the screen and adding background blur, which are both new features to Windows apps.
It is rumored that paint will be getting artificial intelligence treatment soon with text- to- image prompt to generate images. It is rumored that Photos will have a new feature to identify people or objects in photos and then cut / paste them somewhere else, like on the App Store.
Steven Bathiche, the head of Microsoft’s applied sciences group, said in an interview that artificial intelligence will have a significant impact on how you use your computer and how it will evolve.
The Surface team has been focused on AI for years now with features like Windows Studio Effects. These first started shipping on the Arm-powered Surface Pro X in 2020 with a feature that automatically adjusts your eyes during a video call to make it appear like you’re always making eye contact through the camera.
Copilot in Office apps will allow businesses to instantly summarize documents, generate emails, and speed up Excel analysis. Microsoft is hoping to keep out of the way of similar features that are powered by artificial intelligence.
The Bing chat that is available to consumers but has added commercial data protection is the same one that Microsoft started rolling out a preview of earlier this year. I would expect we will hear about some new features for the enterprise and consumer versions of Bing chat when it is released.
