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.
Formula One F1 – United States Grand Prix – Circuit of the Americas, Austin, Texas, U.S. – October 23, 2022 Tim Cook waves the chequered flag to the race winner Red Bull’s Max Verstappen
Mike Segar | Reuters
Apple had two major launches last month. They couldn’t have been more different.
First, Apple revealed some of the artificial intelligence advancements it had been working on in the past year when it released developer versions of its operating systems to muted applause at its annual developer’s conference, WWDC. Then, at the end of the month, Apple hit the red carpet as its first true blockbuster movie, “F1,” debuted to over $155 million — and glowing reviews — in its first weekend.
While “F1” was a victory lap for Apple, highlighting the strength of its long-term outlook, the growth of its services business and its ability to tap into culture, Wall Street’s reaction to the company’s AI announcements at WWDC suggest there’s some trouble underneath the hood.
“F1” showed Apple at its best — in particular, its ability to invest in new, long-term projects. When Apple TV+ launched in 2019, it had only a handful of original shows and one movie, a film festival darling called “Hala” that didn’t even share its box office revenue.
Despite Apple TV+being written off as a costly side-project, Apple stuck with its plan over the years, expanding its staff and operation in Culver City, California. That allowed the company to build up Hollywood connections, especially for TV shows, and build an entertainment track record. Now, an Apple Original can lead the box office on a summer weekend, the prime season for blockbuster films.
The success of “F1” also highlights Apple’s significant marketing machine and ability to get big-name talent to appear with its leadership. Apple pulled out all the stops to market the movie, including using its Wallet app to send a push notification with a discount for tickets to the film. To promote “F1,” Cook appeared with movie star Brad Pitt at an Apple store in New York and posted a video with actual F1 racer Lewis Hamilton, who was one of the film’s producers.
(L-R) Brad Pitt, Lewis Hamilton, Tim Cook, and Damson Idris attend the World Premiere of “F1: The Movie” in Times Square on June 16, 2025 in New York City.
Jamie Mccarthy | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
Although Apple services chief Eddy Cue said in a recent interview that Apple needs the its film business to be profitable to “continue to do great things,” “F1” isn’t just about the bottom line for the company.
Apple’s Hollywood productions are perhaps the most prominent face of the company’s services business, a profit engine that has been an investor favorite since the iPhone maker started highlighting the division in 2016.
Films will only ever be a small fraction of the services unit, which also includes payments, iCloud subscriptions, magazine bundles, Apple Music, game bundles, warranties, fees related to digital payments and ad sales. Plus, even the biggest box office smashes would be small on Apple’s scale — the company does over $1 billion in sales on average every day.
But movies are the only services component that can get celebrities like Pitt or George Clooney to appear next to an Apple logo — and the success of “F1” means that Apple could do more big popcorn films in the future.
“Nothing breeds success or inspires future investment like a current success,” said Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian.
But if “F1” is a sign that Apple’s services business is in full throttle, the company’s AI struggles are a “check engine” light that won’t turn off.
Replacing Siri’s engine
At WWDC last month, Wall Street was eager to hear about the company’s plans for Apple Intelligence, its suite of AI features that it first revealed in 2024. Apple Intelligence, which is a key tenet of the company’s hardware products, had a rollout marred by delays and underwhelming features.
Apple spent most of WWDC going over smaller machine learning features, but did not reveal what investors and consumers increasingly want: A sophisticated Siri that can converse fluidly and get stuff done, like making a restaurant reservation. In the age of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Anthropic’s Claude and Google’s Gemini, the expectation of AI assistants among consumers is growing beyond “Siri, how’s the weather?”
The company had previewed a significantly improved Siri in the summer of 2024, but earlier this year, those features were delayed to sometime in 2026. At WWDC, Apple didn’t offer any updates about the improved Siri beyond that the company was “continuing its work to deliver” the features in the “coming year.” Some observers reduced their expectations for Apple’s AI after the conference.
“Current expectations for Apple Intelligence to kickstart a super upgrade cycle are too high, in our view,” wrote Jefferies analysts this week.
Siri should be an example of how Apple’s ability to improve products and projects over the long-term makes it tough to compete with.
It beat nearly every other voice assistant to market when it first debuted on iPhones in 2011. Fourteen years later, Siri remains essentially the same one-off, rigid, question-and-answer system that struggles with open-ended questions and dates, even after the invention in recent years of sophisticated voice bots based on generative AI technology that can hold a conversation.
Apple’s strongest rivals, including Android parent Google, have done way more to integrate sophisticated AI assistants into their devices than Apple has. And Google doesn’t have the same reflex against collecting data and cloud processing as privacy-obsessed Apple.
Some analysts have said they believe Apple has a few years before the company’s lack of competitive AI features will start to show up in device sales, given the company’s large installed base and high customer loyalty. But Apple can’t get lapped before it re-enters the race, and its former design guru Jony Ive is now working on new hardware with OpenAI, ramping up the pressure in Cupertino.
“The three-year problem, which is within an investment time frame, is that Android is racing ahead,” Needham senior internet analyst Laura Martin said on CNBC this week.
Apple’s services success with projects like “F1” is an example of what the company can do when it sets clear goals in public and then executes them over extended time-frames.
Its AI strategy could use a similar long-term plan, as customers and investors wonder when Apple will fully embrace the technology that has captivated Silicon Valley.
Wall Street’s anxiety over Apple’s AI struggles was evident this week after Bloomberg reported that Apple was considering replacing Siri’s engine with Anthropic or OpenAI’s technology, as opposed to its own foundation models.
The move, if it were to happen, would contradict one of Apple’s most important strategies in the Cook era: Apple wants to own its core technologies, like the touchscreen, processor, modem and maps software, not buy them from suppliers.
Using external technology would be an admission that Apple Foundation Models aren’t good enough yet for what the company wants to do with Siri.
“They’ve fallen farther and farther behind, and they need to supercharge their generative AI efforts” Martin said. “They can’t do that internally.”
Apple might even pay billions for the use of Anthropic’s AI software, according to the Bloombergreport. If Apple were to pay for AI, it would be a reversal from current services deals, like the search deal with Alphabet where the Cupertino company gets paid $20 billion per year to push iPhone traffic to Google Search.
The company didn’t confirm the report and declined comment, but Wall Street welcomed the report and Apple shares rose.
In the world of AI in Silicon Valley, signing bonuses for the kinds of engineers that can develop new models can range up to $100 million, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“I can’t see Apple doing that,” Martin said.
Earlier this week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg sent a memo bragging about hiring 11 AI experts from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google’s DeepMind. That came after Zuckerberg hired Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang to lead a new AI division as part of a $14.3 billion deal.
Meta’s not the only company to spend hundreds of millions on AI celebrities to get them in the building. Google spent big to hire away the founders of Character.AI, Microsoft got its AI leader by striking a deal with Inflection and Amazon hired the executive team of Adept to bulk up its AI roster.
Apple, on the other hand, hasn’t announced any big AI hires in recent years. While Cook rubs shoulders with Pitt, the actual race may be passing Apple by.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks alongside U.S. President Donald Trump to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who bombarded President Donald Trump‘s signature spending bill for weeks, on Friday made his first comments since the legislation passed.
Musk backed a post on X by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who said the bill’s budget “explodes the deficit” and continues a pattern of “short-term politicking over long-term sustainability.”
The House of Representatives narrowly passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act on Thursday, sending it to Trump to sign into law.
Paul and Musk have been vocal opponents of Trump’s tax and spending bill, and repeatedly called out the potential for the spending package to increase the national debt.
The independent Congressional Budget Office has said the bill could add $3.4 trillion to the $36.2 trillion of U.S. debt over the next decade. The White House has labeled the agency as “partisan” and continuously refuted the CBO’s estimates.
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The bill includes trillions of dollars in tax cuts, increased spending for immigration enforcement and large cuts to funding for Medicaid and other programs.
It also cuts tax credits and support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles, a particularly sore spot for Musk, who has several companies that benefit from the programs.
“I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote in a social media post in early June as the pair traded insults and threats.
Shares of Tesla plummeted as the feud intensified, with the company losing $152 billion in market cap on June 5 and putting the company below $1 trillion in value. The stock has largely rebounded since, but is still below where it was trading before the ruckus with Trump.
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Tesla one-month stock chart.
— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger and Erin Doherty contributed to this article.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the Axel Springer building in Berlin on Oct. 17, 2023. He received the annual Axel Springer Award.
Ben Kriemann | Getty Images
Among the thousands of Microsoft employees who lost their jobs in the cutbacks announced this week were 830 staffers in the company’s home state of Washington.
Nearly a dozen game design workers in the state were part of the layoffs, along with three audio designers, two mechanical engineers, one optical engineer and one lab technician, according to a document Microsoft submitted to Washington employment officials.
There were also five individual contributors and one manager at the Microsoft Research division in the cuts, as well as 10 lawyers and six hardware engineers, the document shows.
Microsoft announced plans on Wednesday to eliminate 9,000 jobs, as part of an effort to eliminate redundancy and to encourage employees to focus on more meaningful work by adopting new technologies, a person familiar with the matter told CNBC. The person asked not to be named while discussing private matters.
Scores of Microsoft salespeople and video game developers have since come forward on social media to announce their departure. In April, Microsoft said revenue from Xbox content and services grew 8%, trailing overall growth of 13%.
In sales, the company parted ways with 16 customer success account management staff members based in Washington, 28 in sales strategy enablement and another five in sales compensation. One Washington-based government affairs worker was also laid off.
Microsoft eliminated 17 jobs in cloud solution architecture in the state, according to the document. The company’s fastest revenue growth comes from Azure and other cloud services that customers buy based on usage.
CEO Satya Nadella has not publicly commented on the layoffs, and Microsoft didn’t immediately provide a comment about the cuts in Washington. On a conference call with analysts in April, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said the company had a “focus on cost efficiencies” during the March quarter.