Last week, Microsoft introduced the first wave of Copilot+ PCs powered by Qualcomm Snapdragon X processors. Copilot+ is a new set of features enabled by the powerful NPU in Qualcomm's new chips, and while it won't be exclusive to Qualcomm for long, it will require processors with an NPU that can offer more than 40TOPS of performance at INT8 precision.

Copilot+ is much more than the chatbot we've come to know over the past year and a half, so I'm actually pretty excited about what it can do. So much so that I want to highlight some of the things I'm looking forward to doing when I get my hands on one of these PCs.

Turn my terrible drawings into art

I'm no artist, but Cocreator can help

Long before Copilot+ became a thing, one of the coolest apps I got to play with was Nvidia Canvas. This is an app that leverages the power of Nvidia's RTX GPUs to turn drawings into art by equating colors to certain materials, so you can make a relatively quick doodle and turn it into a realistic-looking image.

With Copilot+ PCs, Microsoft is adding a similar feature to Cocreator in Paint. Essentially, you can use your pen to draw whatever you want, and then combine it with a text prompt to have Cocreator generate a more artistic take on that same image. It's not quite the same, but it's a great way to turn rough drafts into a beautiful piece that more closely resembles your vision.

I'm not at all an artist, but as Microsoft points out, everyone can have the imagination to create beautiful works of art, it's just hard to translate that into an actual image that looks good. With Cocreator, you don't have to worry about that part of the process anymore. Of course, it may not be perfect, but even if you want to commission a real artist to create a specific image, Cocreator can convey a better idea of what you want to see.

Add subtitles to everything with Live Captions

Make language barriers a thing of the past

Live Captions in WIndows 11 are already a super useful feature in WIndows 11, since they can caption any video you're currently playing on your PC. It's not something I use all the time because I do generally understand English, but for accessibility, it's really nice. But with Copilot+ PCs, it's being taken to the next level.

Now, thanks to the power of AI, Live Captions will not only be able to be able to caption videos in English, but they can also translate videos and add English subtitles on the fly. It supports 44 languages, and it can be useful for a lot of reasons, whether you're watching a YouTube video in a different language, finding an old obscure movie without subtitles, or calling someone who might not speak English, Live Captions can help with all of that.

The focus on English does make it a little less useful for calls since you'd probably want translation to go both ways, but it's a great start, and hopefully it will expand over time.

Play games with higher quality

Auto Super Resolution is very welcome

AI-based upscaling isn't really anything new at this point, but the big problem with it is that for it to work in a game, that game needs to specifically add support. What's more, you probably also need a discrete GPU, at least in the case of Nvidia's DLSS (AMD and Intel's implementations do work processors with integrated graphics). But since Auto Super Resolution on Windows 11 is based on the NPU, which most laptops are going to have soon enough, it makes it that much more widely available.

Perhaps more importantly, though, this capability means games can run that much more smoothly on the upcoming Snapdragon X laptops. These laptops are facing an uphill battle when it comes to performance since most games are going to be emulated for Arm, but with this performance boost from Auto Super Resolution, you can probably play a lot of games on these devices with decent settings. In fact, there's already a website for tracking what games work and what games don't, so you can know what to expect.

With any luck, this could even enable gaming handhelds to start being powered by Snapdragon X processors, though that might be reaching a bit.

Pick up where I left off

Windows 11 can Recall what I was doing

Finally, what I would say is the most exciting feature of them all is Recall. Recall is sort of like Timeline on Windows 10 in that it can remember what you were doing in the past. So, if you were editing a document, your PC remembers it, and the next time you use it, you can go back to where you were.

However, there are some very important differences. Most notably, Recall doesn't need to be built into each app in order for that app to appear in your timeline. Whatever app you were using, Windows 11 can remember, and you don't even to depend on third-party developers to make this capability useful.

The other big difference is that you can search through the Recall timeline using natural language. If you were working on a document about renewable energy, for example, you can ask Recall to "open that document about renewable energy I worked on last week", and it will be able to surface that document for you.

I always liked Timeline as a concept, and the fact that it didn't work with all apps was really its biggest flaw. With that addressed, I'm really excited to use this capability on Copilot+ PCs.

It's just the start

All of this is incredibly cool stuff, but there's actually even more that's part of the Copilot+ feature set. You're going to have new Windows Studio Effects to liven up your camera feed during video calls, and your laptop will be able to dim or lock your screen when you're not using it, so your data stays safe and you waste less battery.

Plus, with NPUs rapidly evolving, you can bet there will be many more AI features coming to Windows 11 over the next few years. It's going to be a pretty exciting journey, and the way we use our computers could change dramatically.