Microsoft’s Windows 11 brings the Start menu to the center of the screen.
Jordan Novet | CNBC
Microsoft on Tuesday said it started rolling out the next major update to its Windows 11 PC operating system. The new version contains a chatbot called Copilot that bears some resemblance to startup OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT.
Copilot is a generative artificial intelligence that can create human-like text and other content with just a few words of human direction. It relies on underlying large language models that Microsoft-backed OpenAI has trained on voluminous sets of data to compose email text, answer questions and automatically perform actions in Windows, augmenting its knowledge with information from websites.
Microsoft upgraded its Bing search engine with a chatbot earlier this year, and now a variation is enhancing the latest version of the world’s most widely used PC operating system. Meanwhile, later this week, the company will start selling the Microsoft 365 Copilot, an AI add-on for corporate workers that use its productivity apps.
PC-specific features in the Windows Copilot include the ability to open apps, switch to dark mode, turn on Bluetooth and get guidance on making a screenshot. While you’re looking at a website in the Edge browser, you can have the Copilot come up with a summary of what’s on the page. On Apple’s Mac computers, people can have conversations with the Siri assistant, but its answers aren’t as detailed as those from Windows Copilot.
Windows 11 now represents about 24% of desktop PCs, according to StatCounter data, while Windows 10, which will be supported until October 2025, controls almost 72% of the market. After that, Windows 11, which debuted in 2021, could become more popular.
“We are seeing accelerated Windows 11 deployments worldwide from companies like BP, Eurowings, Kantar and RBC,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said on a conference call with analysts last week.
Windows remains important at Microsoft, providing one-tenth of total revenue. Microsoft wants to keep Windows relevant because it’s a foundation for the company’s Microsoft 365 productivity applications and a springboard for growth in the Azure public cloud.
Copilot is probably the biggest part of this year’s Windows 11 release. Some people are already using Copilot, by way of a “continuous innovation” release that Microsoft issued in September. The process gives the company a way to provide new features to customers a few times a year, rather than sticking to the previously announced annual schedule.
When you click on the new Copilot icon in the taskbar or hit the Windows+C keyboard shortcut, you can bring up a panel on the right side of your display where you can have a text conversation with the new virtual assistant. It’s meant to be more capable than Cortana, which Microsoft introduced in 2015 with the launch of Windows 10 and has been gradually eliminating.
Here’s a list of some of the other new features of the Windows 11 2023 Update, also known as 23H2:
A virtual video editor. An auto-compose feature in the built-in Clipchamp video-editing app is making the process of putting together a final video a bit easier, using AI. After you answer a few questions, Clipchamp will prepare a compilation of scenes drawn from your footage.
Polyglot screen reading. Last year, Microsoft introduced natural-sounding voices that use AI to read text on screen in Windows’ Narrator accessibility feature. The new update adds support for additional languages, including English in the United Kingdom and India, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin Chinese, Portuguese and Spanish.
Lower energy bills. Some PCs have built-in presence sensors that can make your display turn off when you walk away and then wake up when you return. A new energy-saving “adaptive dimming” feature can dim your screen when you look away from the display and brighten it up when you look at it again. You can turn this feature on or off when setting up a device with this update or in the Settings app.
Boot to the cloud. If you have a cloud-based version of Windows, you can log directly into the cloud instance as your primary experience on your PC.
Smarter snipping. It’s getting easier to pull out text directly from screenshots with Windows. With the updated Snipping Tool app included with Windows 11, you can copy text from a screenshot and quickly redact emails or phone numbers.
Better backup. Microsoft will let users back up apps they’ve previously installed on a PC to restore them, along with pinned app preferences, in the future.
Paint with words. In the next few weeks — Microsoft is trying out this feature with testers — the Paint app will receive AI powers. You’ll be able to type in a few words and pick a style, and Paint will create an image according to your description. It’s similar to tools from Adobe and other companies, as well as Microsoft’s own image creator in the Bing search engine.
More taskbar customization. Windows 11 introduced a stark new taskbar that puts the Start button and a series of app icons in the center at the bottom of the screen. Now you can view app icons with labels, similar to how you could in Windows 10. Even apps that aren’t running can appear with labels. You can also hide the time and date.
Notepad with memory. Notepad will automatically save your status so that if you close the note-taking app and reopen it, you can get right back to your work.
Easier picture hunting. Microsoft wizened up the Photos app for Windows 11 so you can type in keywords and objects in the search box to find relevant images stored in OneDrive.
File recommendations at work. If you’re using Windows 11 on your work computer, the File Explorer and Start menu will start showing suggestions of files you might want to open based on your usage.
Games right away. Microsoft is starting to test “instant games,” which will let you try playing casual games you find in the company’s Store app without downloading and installing them first. Google tried something similar on Android a few years ago.
Developer landing pad. The Dev Home app gives software developers a destination for tracking activity on Microsoft-owned GitHub, monitoring PC activity and setting up a new type of PC storage volume called a Dev Drive.
A home for system stuff. When you click on the “All apps” button in the Start menu, apps that Microsoft considers system components, such as File Explorer, will display a new “system” label. Until now, you could manage them by going to Settings > Apps > Installed apps. Now there’s a dedicated page for them at Settings > System > System components.
Some of these features might not work right away and will appear in the new update over time. For example, the Windows Copilot is still in preview and is only available in North America and parts of Asia and South America. The company wants to expand the feature to other regions in the future.
How to try the new features
If you’d like to get your Windows 11 PC running version 23H2, you can open the Settings app, find the Windows Update section and hit the “Check for updates” button. A blog post has detail on the update for education and commercial customers.
Microsoft will eventually offer the update to your Windows 11 PC. If Microsoft determines that the new update could cause an issue, you won’t be given a chance to install it until everything has been ironed out.
Cryptocurrencies extended their rally on Sunday, with bitcoin touching $80,000 for the first time ever.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by 4.5% at $79,800.19, according to Coin Metrics. Ether rose 3%, after passing the $3,000 level on Saturday. It last changed hands at $3,203.10.
Smaller coins saw bigger moves as investors continued to digest the implications of a second term for President-elect Donald Trump. The payments coin XRP surged 11%. The decentralized finance token tied to Cardano rocketed 40%. Memecoins dogecoin and Shiba Inu coin soared 17% and 31%, respectively.
“Crypto is poised to enter a golden era,” Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, said in a research note Friday. “Trump has promised to make America the ‘crypto capital of the world’ and his high level team is filled with strong crypto advocates … . The pro-crypto nature of his team, family, and donors increases the likelihood that Trump follows through on his campaign promises to the industry.”
Bitcoin touches $80,000 on Sunday for the first time ever.
Bitcoin was deemed a safe asset regardless of the outcome of the election — it is not considered a security, even by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Trump has made big overtures about bitcoin like entertaining the idea of a strategic national bitcoin reserve and speaking about the need to keep all bitcoin mined in America.
Ether and other cryptocurrencies, however, stand to gain much more from the crypto-friendly regulatory environment that Trump has promised and appears to be a priority for many in his inner circle. For example, one reason the spot bitcoin ETFs didn’t see as much success as bitcoin ETFs is because they don’t distribute staking rewards. Many in the industry are hopeful that will change next year.
“In this environment, over the next two years we expect that bitcoin and other digital assets will trade significantly higher than the current all-time high,” Thorn said. “What was once an oppressive headwind in the world’s largest capital market will now shift to a tailwind, and no one is bullish enough.”
Bitcoin and ether have gained 18% and 32%, respectively, since election day. Coinbase rose 48% last week, its best week since January 2023.
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In this photo illustration, the OpenAI logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen with a photo of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
Didem Mente | Anadolu | Getty Images
OpenAI estimates that ChatGPT rejected more than 250,000 requests to generate images of the 2024 U.S. presidential candidates in the lead up to Election Day, the company said in a blog on Friday.
The rejections included image-generation requests involving President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Vice President-elect JD Vance, OpenAI said.
The rise of generative artificial intelligence has led to concerns about how misinformation created using the technology could affect the numerous elections taking place around the world in 2024.
The number of deepfakes has increased 900% year over year, according to data from Clarity, a machine learning firm. Some included videos that were created or paid for by Russians seeking to disrupt the U.S. elections, U.S. intelligence officials say.
In a 54-page October report, OpenAI said it had disrupted “more than 20 operations and deceptive networks from around the world that attempted to use our models.” The threats ranged from AI-generated website articles to social media posts by fake accounts, the company wrote. None of the election-related operations were able to attract “viral engagement,” the report noted.
In its Friday blog, OpenAI said it hadn’t seen any evidence that covert operations aiming to influence the outcome of the U.S. election using the company’s products were able to successfully go viral or build “sustained audiences.”
Lawmakers have been particularly concerned about misinformation in the age of generative AI, which took off in late 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT. Large language models are still new and routinely spit out inaccurate and unreliable information.
“Voters categorically should not look to AI chatbots for information about voting or the election — there are far too many concerns about accuracy and completeness,” Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, told CNBC last week.
Elon Musk on stage before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY on Sunday, October 27, 2024.
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Shares of Tesla climbed more than 6% in midmorning trading Friday, pushing the electric vehicle maker’s market cap past $1 trillion.
The company’s stock has rallied about 27% this week after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election and investors have grown optimistic that the former leader’s return to the White House could benefit Tesla. Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, has been a key ally for Trump throughout his campaign, pouring at least $130 million into a pro-Trump campaign effort.
Tesla had a market cap of $807.1 billion through Tuesday’s close. Before this week’s rally, shares of the carmaker were up about 1% for the year. Tesla’s stock is now up about 27% year to date.
Tesla market cap
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Tesla rejoins a growing club of tech names that are now worth more than $1 trillion, including Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta (though all but Meta are worth more than $2 trillion). Tesla’s market cap first crossed the $1 trillion mark in October 2021.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives has said that a potential Trump administration could spell less regulation for Tesla and other companies.
“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched in the EV industry and this dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players (BYD, Nio, etc.) from flooding the U.S. market over the coming years,” Ives wrote in a note to clients this week.
Trump has said previously he may cut the federal $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit. Those credits have helped to drive sales of Tesla vehicles historically.
In its most recent earnings update, Teslareported revenue of $25.18 billion and net income of $2.17 billion in the third quarter.
CEO Musk said on the earnings call that his “best guess” was that “vehicle growth” would reach 20% to 30% next year, due to “lower cost vehicles” and the “advent of autonomy.”
Tesla has been promising, and developing, driverless vehicle technology for more than a decade. Its key U.S. competitor, Alphabet-owned Waymo, has pulled ahead and is already operating commercial robotaxi services in several major cities.
On the third-quarter call, Musk said he would use his sway with a Trump-Vance administration to establish a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.” Currently, approvals happen at the state level, which the CEO sees as a regulatory hurdle Tesla will need to overcome once it finally offers more than partially automated driving systems.
— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the year Tesla’s market cap crossed $1 trillion for the first time. Tesla’s net income was $2.17 billion in the third quarter. An earlier version misstated the figure.