The Surface and Windows and Web Experiences Team: Launching AI-Powered Web Services in Microsoft after Panay’s Event in New York City
With Panay’s shock resignation, Microsoft’s event in New York City will now offer the first glimpse at the future of Windows and Surface under new leadership. Three new Surface devices are expected from Microsoft, but they are also expected to feature features powered by artificial intelligence.
The consumer marketing head for Microsoft is taking on theresponsibilities of leading the Windows and Surface businesses and products outside. Crucially, Mehdi’s job title hasn’t changed with Panay’s departure here, so Microsoft no longer has a chief product officer.
He first joined Microsoft in 1992, working on product management for Internet Explorer and Windows before helping lead Microsoft’s entry into search with Bing. He has worked at Microsoft for four different CEOs and has launched a lot of different products. He’s been involved in Surface, the Windows 10 launch, and the HoloLens headset.
Interestingly, Microsoft is also building a new “Windows and Web Experiences” team. Microsoft often forms these types of teams when it wants to tackle a particular new area for Windows, and this time, it’s building AI-powered web services for Windows. Microsoft has already turned to web-based features in Windows 11 with things like the search interface, awidget system, and more. So expect to see a lot more of this in the future.
Mikhail Parakhin, who has been focused on Bing Chat in recent months, is leading this new experiences team, and it will include executives who have a history in product management, engineering, and Microsoft’s cross-devices Android work.
The Surface and Surface Edge Plans for Copilot: Predictions for the Surface Go 4 and the Surface Laptop Go 3 Spectrometers
Microsoft also turned to AI to help power its Surface smart camera recently, so there’s a chance we might see other accessories that leverage AI smarts for Surface.
Perhaps this uncertainty around the PC business after a big boom in sales has led Panay back to just wanting to build devices rather than the complicated task of running Windows and gearing it up for AI and a future in the cloud.
A dual-screen Surface Duo 3 is believed to have been scrapped by Microsoft after the cancellation of the Surface Neo dual screen device. It is not clear what will happen to Microsoft’s attempts to build a mobile operating system. The original Surface Duo has only been updated two times. Microsoft discontinued their mice, keyboards, and webcams in favor of Surface accessories.
The revenue of Microsoft’s Surface and Devices division was hammered this year after PC shipments experienced big declines. Before the PC pandemic boom, Nadella was also looking at a future beyond Windows, iOS, and Android. He joked in January 2020 that Windows could be called “Azure Edge” in the future to make it clear that cloud services are the biggest hardware business at Microsoft.
Microsoft will not focus on Surface and Windows in the special event. I’m expecting to hear a lot more about Microsoft’s Copilot plans for Microsoft 365 and Office apps. When enterprise users will get access to the future of Office documents, it is time for Microsoft to release a release date for Copilot.
The design of the Surface Go 4 is expected to be the same as that of the Surface Go 3 model. Speaking of leaks, images of the Surface Laptop Go 3 have also appeared online. It looks very similar to the Surface Laptop Go 2, but the new model is rumored to ship with Intel’s 12th Gen CPUs and is also expected to ship in early October.
Microsoft’s Impact on Artificial Intelligence (aka AI) in the Coming Term: Towards Beyond Copilot and Bing Chat
I’m expecting Microsoft to detail more than just Copilot, though. We are seeing new features like background blur and copying text from the screen in Windows apps, with the test versions of the Snipping Tool and Photos app updated with these new features.
Paint is also rumored to be getting the AI treatment soon with text-to-image prompts to generate images automatically. It has been rumored that Photos will have a new feature that identifies people in photos and then cuts and pastes them elsewhere, like the one found on the mobile operating system.
AI “will have a potentially profound impact on how you use your computer and how it will essentially evolve in regards to its form,” said Steven Bathiche, the head of Microsoft’s applied sciences group, in an interview with The Verge last year.
The Surface team has been focused on AI for years now with features like Windows Studio Effects. The feature that adjusts your eyes when you use the Surface Pro X to make it appear as if you are eye contact with the camera was first introduced in 2020.
Copilot in Office apps will allow businesses to instantly summarize documents, generate emails, and speed up Excel analysis. Microsoft is trying to get rid of the competition with similar features from other companies.
In the course of the year, Microsoft started rolling out a preview of a Bing chat that is similar to the one available to consumers, but with added commercial data protection. I’d expect we may hear when Bing Chat Enterprise is coming out of preview and some additional features for both the Bing Chat consumer and enterprise versions.