Microsoft’s Copilot+ PC hype needs to end, analysts say

Microsoft should drop the Copilot+ moniker for AI PCs, as it has sown confusion among buyers and failed to deliver on over-hyped promises, according to analysts.

Copilot+ Windows 11 PCs were first introduced in 2024. The PCs can run AI applications on device without an Internet connection and include unique AI hardware such as neural processing units (NPUs).

But Copilot+ has created nothing but headaches and confusion among consumers, enterprises, and programmers, said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research. “Microsoft never gets anything right the first time,” he said.

The industry didn’t ask for jazzed-up AI PCs, as many of today’s Windows computers can already handle some level of AI — and more complex tasks could be done in the cloud, McGregor said.

The Copilot+ and AI PC concept put arbitrary technical barriers to AI, which also baffled  buyers, McGregor said. (Microsoft requires PC makers to meet minimum AI performance standards from AI chips not typically found in regular PCs.)

Users who bought into the hype around AI PCs thinking, “I get all these cool AI features on any standard Windows PC,” found instead they got expensive paperweights with few applications, McGregor said.

At last month’s Ignite conference, Microsoft highlighted its Windows 365 cloud PC concept — with new features such as AI agents — more than it talked up AI PCs. Smaller Copilot+ PCs announcements were largely lost in all the conference noise, though a few small AI features exclusive to Copilot+ PCs were unveiled, including Fluid dictation, the ability to convert a table to Excel with Click to Do, and offline support for writing assistance.

“We’re still committed to delivering unique AI value on Copilot+ PCs like we have with improved Windows search, Recall (preview), and Click to Do — and we see that continuing to expand with agents, like we delivered in Settings this past year,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Computerworld.

Over the past year and a half, many enterprises found themselves buying AI PCs with little understanding of how best to use them.

Users could, and still can, complete their AI needs in the cloud, which puts a question mark on the immediate value of Copilot+, said Bob O’Donnell, principal analyst at Technalysis Research. “That whole NPU thing becomes kind of silly and non-essential,” he said. “In retrospect, it would have been better, I have argued, if they had released the cloud-AI features first, and then introduced Copilot+.”

Microsoft’s Copilot+ created a higher-priced PC with new AI capabilities, but enterprises mostly didn’t buy into the hype, said Jitesh Ubrani, research manager at IDC. “It promises a certain level of AI performance, but in the last two years, enterprises have found themselves in a tough spot due to the economy and the lack of on-device AI use cases,” he said.

The current crop of Copilot+ PCs failed to generate excitement in the AI PC category, Ubrani said. “It’s helped increase ASPs and differentiate the premium segment from the rest of the pack, but by and large it hasn’t increased the market size in terms of units,” he said.

In the long run, all Windows computers will be AI PCs, though they will vary in terms of capabilities in order to maintain different price points, Ubrani said.

Microsoft itself, in fact, declared that all PCs will be AI PCs in October, hinting at cutting off the exclusivity of some AI features to Copilot+ PCs. The declaration came a day after Windows 10 support ended.

At the same time, Microsoft also announced new Copilot features that would work on all PCs. “These experiences are available on any Windows 11 PC,” said Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president, and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, in a blog entry.

At the initial Copilot+ PC launch, Microsoft promised a bevy of applications that could take advantage of the hardware. But the software ecosystem wasn’t ready, and applications are still lagging behind the AI chips.

The original Copilot+ PCs included AI chips from Qualcomm, Intel, and AMD, which are all different by design and performance. That led to confusion among programmers who had to write code for completely different AI chips. That meant writing different versions of the same applications.

That has become less of an issue now because of a recently announced feature called Windows ML 2.0, which does not distinguish between different NPUs, CPUs, GPUs, and AI chips, O’Donnell said. Microsoft earlier this year also added the Phi and Mu small language models (SLMs) for AI applications to run directly on PCs.

While the new AI features announced at Ignite also take advantage of the NPUs, Microsoft’s hard requirement for a performant NPU has been dwindling, analysts said. There are signs Intel may be deprioritizing NPUs and switching back to GPUs as a minimum compute standard for AI PCs.

The chip maker’s upcoming PC processor, Panther Lake, puts more AI performance on GPUs, while the NPU received a very minor upgrade compared to previous chips. (Comparatively, Snapdragon chips put more AI performance in NPUs.)

PCs with Panther Lake chips are slated to be available early next year. GPUs can run more AI applications than NPUs, which are built for specific tasks.

“Intel is going the other way. So, they’re going to have like a 50-TOPS NPU…. But they’re putting most of their AI TOPS in the GPU,” McGregor said.

While Copilot+ largely turned out to be marketing hype, in the larger scheme of things, Windows is evolving to be AI-first, said Leonard Lee, principal analyst at Next Curve. “Microsoft is trying to leverage the capabilities of AI to make the PC useful again…. They want to continue to join with all the chip guys to set certain minimum capabilities to meet what Microsoft sees as a requirement,” Lee said.