Microsoft would love 2024 to be the “year of the AI PC” and to place a degree on that, the corporate right now introduced a brand new key for Copilot — that’s, a bodily key that can quickly make its option to your keyboard and be part of the Home windows key, along with its buddies the Management key, Alt and that Insert key you’ve by no means purposely used. Primarily based on the picture Microsoft despatched over, it appears to be like like the brand new Copilot key will exchange the proper Management key on the usual PC keyboard, the place it should slot in between the Alt key and the left arrow key.
“The introduction of the Copilot key marks the first significant change to the Windows PC keyboard in nearly three decades,” Microsoft’s Yusuf Mehdi, Govt Vice President & Shopper Chief Advertising and marketing Officer, writes in right now’s announcement. “We believe it will empower people to participate in the AI transformation more easily. The Copilot key joins the Windows key as a core part of the PC keyboard and when pressed, the new key will invoke the Copilot in Windows experience to make it seamless to engage Copilot in your day to day.”
In areas the place Copilot is just not obtainable, the Copilot key will launch Home windows Search. The primary keyboards with the brand new key will launch at this yr’s CES in Las Vegas and can doubtless begin transport in late February.
In case you wanted any extra proof that Microsoft is all in on the AI hype practice, the truth that it now, for the primary time because the Home windows brand key appeared on a Microsoft Pure Keyboard in 1994, including a brand new button is all you could know.
Microsoft, along with its chip companions like AMD and Intel, hopes that quite a lot of the AI inferencing will quickly be offloaded onto native silicon, which is able to then “unlock new AI experiences on the Windows PC.” By no means given to hyperbole, Microsoft notes that it sees “this as another transformative moment in our journey with Windows where Copilot will be the entry point into the world of AI on the PC.”
Fortunately, your outdated keyboards will proceed to perform identical to earlier than — and in case your keyboard permits, you might even have the ability to remap your proper Management key to perform just like the Copilot key. Or you may ignore the entire thing, after all.