Much AI About Nothing ⭐

When Windows lead Pavan Davuluri tweeted about a session he was headlining at Ignite 2025 this past week, he was confronted by a nearly endless stream of hate, small-mindedness, and change aversity. But when Windows lead Pavan Davuluri opened that very session on Thursday, the message he and his colleagues delivered didn’t rise to the controversy. In fact, now I’m even more confused by all the hate, small-mindedness, and change aversity.

You can watch the session for yourself if you’re bored, though you’ll have to stream it, as I couldn’t find a downloadable version. You should watch Agents at Work: Windows Powers the Era of Intelligent Productivity. That session features two of the people who presented at Davuluri’s session and is arguably a bit more detailed look at some of the same content.

Either way, what you will learn is that Microsoft is evolving Windows, as it does, to meet the needs of the latest technology shift, in this case, AI. This follows a natural progression, Davuluri said, that’s occurred over the 40 years that Windows has been available, alongside previous technological milestones like the GUI, the web, mobility, and the cloud. I argue that AI is a far more natural fit for Windows than the cloud: As a desktop operating system, Windows is the obvious place for Microsoft to add platform-level capabilities like those Microsoft showed off at Ignite.

I can’t explain why Davuluri’s innocuous tweet generated so much drama. But I can explain what it is that he and others communicated about how Windows is evolving to take on agentic AI capabilities. And I can do it without any drama. It just doesn’t warrant it.

Copilot is just a front-end app for cloud AI services and agents are simply background processes.

For Copilot and agents to interact with the apps we use on Windows—Microsoft apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, but also any third-party apps—those apps need to be updated so that they can be controlled at a programmatic level. I have yet to find a good term for this, but this functionality is just a continuation or extension of the Share capabilities in Windows in which apps can broadcast their compatibility with specific file and data types and then be made available as a Share target. It’s also a thematic descendant of Copy and Paste, COM/COM+, and other means of cross-app and cross-PC interactions.

Using these new agentic capabilities is opt-in, so it’s up to IT (in businesses) and users (everywhere) to decide if and when to use them. Full stop. This is the fact that ends the “should I hate this thing?” flowchart that triggered all the knee-jerk reaction to Davuluri’s tweet. If you don’t want to use this stuff, you don’t have to.

Because typing can be tedious, Copilot has been updated with Voice capabilities that allow users to interact with it and the agents coming to Windows using natural language. This, too, is not controversial. It will not replace other interaction methods like mouse/touchpad, keyboard, touch, smart pen, or whatever else. It will be another option that you can use or not use, your choice. But aside from the obvious conversational capabilities, the key benefit here, and the key way in which AI and agents differ from today’s apps, is that Copilot can understand intent.

Intent is important. In the sense that computing is just 1s and 0s, developers and engineers have long built systems that require specific inputs to achieve specific results. If you want to copy and paste data from one app into another, you need to know the specific keyboard shortcuts, toolbar buttons, menu items, or whatever else to make all that happen. With natural language, you can simply explain what you want in your own words, and if the AI or agents are capable of doing that thing, it will just happen. This will seem unsophisticated at first, but as apps become more programmatic, it will get better. As Microsoft says, in time, using agents will be as familiar as using apps today.

To adapt Windows to these new use cases, Microsoft is introducing updated and new user interfaces that should look and feel familiar to anyone comfortable using Windows today. For example, the Search box in the Taskbar is being updated with Copilot and agentic capabilities and it will launch a file, app, or web search, Copilot, or one or more agents based on what it is you’re asking. File Explorer will expose Writing Assistance, Summarize, and other Copilot capabilities for the files you see. The Notification Center calendar display will use Copilot to interact with your schedule and tasks. And when you or Copilot fires off agents to get work done over time, the Taskbar will display app-like icons so you can check in on them, and they can prompt you in return. Meanwhile, you can just keep working normally.

Microsoft is also working to integrate Microsoft 365 Copilot capabilities in Windows because these two platforms, the OS that is Windows and the Office productivity suite that is part of Microsoft 365, are such obvious companions that many users, especially in the enterprise, use them together. This means that core capabilities like Writing Assistance won’t need to be manually built into each app that lets you write, but will instead be made available to any place you can input text in Windows, including all third-party apps. And if you have a Copilot+ PC with a powerful NPU, those capabilities will work offline since they can run locally and don’t need the cloud.

AI is also making Windows more accessible. In addition to the Writing Assistance noted above, the AI-based Fluid Dictation works like dictation today but adds the ability to resolve issues in real-time by understanding what it is that you’re saying, and changing any awkward words and phrases you utter without changing the meaning. It feels a bit like autocorrect on steroids.

There are Windows 365 and security, privacy, and IT management and compliance capabilities all over this because it’s Microsoft and that’s what they do. But the focus here is on consumers, or individuals, so I will simply skip that and let those who are interested view whatever Ignite sessions and reference Microsoft’s documentation as needed.

But I must reiterate that none of this is controversial. But much of it is forward leaning, of course. And that means that we will spend the next year or more watching as Microsoft drip-feeds new AI and agentic capabilities into Windows 11 through the Insider Program, evaluate the changes as they come, and form more educated opinions as the capabilities Microsoft promises either do or do not pan out.

There is so much work to be done here, and all across the stack. There is an emerging developer story that is confusing and, to this date, ever-changing. There is even more confusion around the various Copilot products, from Copilot on Windows 11 to Microsoft 365 Copilot and Copilot+ PCs, how each differs, where each works together, and where they sometimes overlap. In a way, this is like a giant matrix of capabilities with many empty squares waiting to be filled in as time goes by.

But make no mistake, it’s happening, and that’s true whether we’re ready or not, open to these updates or not, or believe that AI will transform the way we work or not. Looking just at the issues the Twitter mob got so incensed over, I just don’t see any cause for concern. Of course, Windows will adopt AI capabilities broadly, it’s an OS and the orchestrator of the apps we all use. And of course it will gain agentic capabilities, because those apps will be controlled programmatically by those agents and Copilot, unlocking functionality that today requires us to be experts in each app. Freeing us from the time it takes to gain that expertise will allow us to focus on what’s really important to us.

As Microsoft rolls out this functionality and we can test it for ourselves and determine how well it matches the claims and meets our needs, we can debate individual features and user interfaces.

Can we talk?

Understanding and accepting this requires a bit of empathy, a quality that is in short supply these days. There are plenty of features in Windows that I don’t personally like or use, and I disable or remove them as needed while understanding that others may love those features and use them every day. And I am not bothered by any of that.

I override the default Print Screen feature in Windows 11, for example. I disable the Snap Layout panel that appears when I move a window. I also now disable the similar Drag Tray panel (in Settings > System > Nearby sharing if you’re curious, it’s a new setting). I use the Keyboard Manager in PowerToys to ensure that the Copilot key on all my keyboards, a key I do not want and will never use, doesn’t ever launch Copilot, an app I do not want and will never use either. (I switch it to be the same as tapping the Left arrow key.) I do not enable or use Recall. And so on.

None of this is difficult. None of this makes me hate Windows or the people who make Windows. (Well, maybe the Copilot key. That one is a bit tough. But let’s not get distracted here.) And none of it freaks me out.

What does freak me out are some of the objectively terrible behaviors still lurking in Windows 11, like the OneDrive Folder backup feature that auto-enables even after I’ve said no to its insistent prompts multiple times. That is unacceptable, and that is the type of thing I spend time and effort on. (And lots of money, as it turns out.)

But not this.

Even if the agentic capabilities that Microsoft is now promising flame out in the most spectacular way imaginable and implode in Microsoft’s face in a Windows 8-level cataclysmic event, I’ll be OK. And so will you.