We've been hearing about Copilot+ for months now, yet its headlining feature, Recall, is out of action for the foreseeable future. While Recall itself was an interesting feature, the rest of the Copilot+ suite pales in comparison to what Apple Intelligence is promising. And even if Apple delivers on only half of its AI promises, that will still be significantly more than what Microsoft has managed to do.

In that sense, given how much Microsoft has been beating the privacy drum while touting its on-device AI, it's clear that the company took the path of more on-device, fewer features. Apple tried to get the best of both worlds, and the result has been that Apple Intelligence looks more like a cohesive and complete product while offering features that people will actually care about.

Even worse, not only did Microsoft get beaten in many respects in AI, it still managed to come out the loser from a privacy standpoint. Recall is now being made an opt-in feature, will come with just-in-time decryption for storing its data on-device, and will be completely transparent for the user. Microsoft dumbed down its AI, but still, it managed to get it badly wrong.

Microsoft dumbed down Copilot+

There's no way Microsoft didn't dream bigger

To recap everything that Copilot+ can do, here's what Microsoft is promising to those who go out and buy a shiny new Snapdragon X Elite laptop right now.

1. Live Captions: Real-time captioning and translation of videos and live streams in 44 languages.
2. Cocreator: On-device AI for generating images and text, enhancing creativity in applications like Paint.
3. Auto Super Resolution: Improves gaming resolution and frame rates without impacting performance.
4. New Windows Studio Effects: Advanced video effects including background blur, video reframing, gaze adjustment, lighting adjustments, and creative filters, all processed on-device.
5. Adaptive Dimming and Adaptive Lock: Automatically dims the screen and locks the PC when you look away or walk away, and wakes it up upon return using Windows Hello.

To be clear, a lot of these features are pretty cool in isolation, but they're not really new features. Live Captions is something that we've had on smartphones, Cocreator has been possible on GPUs for quite a while now, Auto Super Resolution sounds like DLSS, all of the Windows Studio Effects could be done in the past, and Adaptive Dimming and Adaptive Lock resembles features like Dell's ExpressSign-in and HP's Presence Aware tech.

In other words, Microsoft has essentially standardized a ton of features to run on an NPU within Windows, rather than leaving it to run these features on a CPU or a GPU. That part is great, but it's nothing new. There's nothing revolutionary or groundbreaking, and still, the company managed to screw up its launch and cause itself a PR nightmare around privacy.

In contrast, Apple dreamed big. I'm sure not all of it will land or be useful, but there are plenty of features that will. ChatGPT integration and a smarter Siri might actually make a voice assistant useful on a laptop for arguably the first time ever. Plus, native system integration for correcting text? Grammarly move over, because that kind of integration is groundbreaking for a number of reasons.

Microsoft can add more features in the future

This doesn't have to be Copilot+ forever

Naturally, Microsoft will probably want to launch more Copilot+ features in the future, and what that means is that even if Copilot+ is dumb now, it can get better. Microsoft will need to be extra careful with any cloud integration through like Apple has done with its Private Cloud Compute, as any wrong move will have the company facing the ire of those scorned by Microsoft's attempts at bringing Recall to Windows computers.

With that, Microsoft can also seek inspiration from others in the industry and what they do, most notably Apple in this case. However, companies like Asus have already also announced that they'll be bringing AI features to Windows computers with NPUs in the future. In the case of Asus, the company announced StoryCube, a program that will run locally and sort your photos and videos by the faces that are shown in them. These features will almost certainly inspire Microsoft as well.

Apple may have an advantage at this stage, but Microsoft can still pull things back and get ahead in the future. Copilot+ was dumb relative to what Microsoft has almost certainly considered, but Recall was a glimpse into a future of on-device AI that's genuinely useful. Maybe we won't have long to wait and see how Microsoft intends to fix it, but even more pertinent, maybe we'll have some new Copilot+ features in the next year or two.