Windows 11 is About to Get Its AI Moment (Premium)

As Windows 11 lurches into 2024 with rumors of a Moment 5 update, there are far bigger and more important updates to come. And it all starts with Windows 11 version 24H2, which I think will deliver Windows' long-awaited AI moment.

First things first.

Nothing is certain these days, but Moment 5 should arrive in preview form as soon as February 27, on the normal Week D schedule, about two and a half weeks from now. By all accounts, it will be lackluster, a small collection of new features that includes small improvements to Notepad, Copilot in Windows, Nearby Share, Windows 365, and the like. The only interesting changes will be limited to the EMEA since this is where Microsoft will allegedly start implementing the changes required by the EU Digital Markets Act (DMA). Changes that, ahem, should be made available to all of Microsoft's customers.

Moments and the monthly features that Microsoft seems to burp out to users randomly and without warning aren't all that interesting, aside from the "it would be funny if it weren't so troubling" fact that many of these updates are never tested before being foisted on the public. I am much more interested in 24H2, which we once thought of as Windows 12. And not just because it will represent another round of major updates for my Windows 11 Field Guide: I live in Windows 11 all day every day, and I'm curious to see how or if the AI advances that Microsoft is making in other parts of the company will ever impact this platform in a major way.

There's been precious little evidence of that so far. Yes, Microsoft rushed Copilot into Windows 11---and then, in a bit of PR tap-dancing, Windows 10---last year, force-installing it on as many users as possible. And it's now routinely updating this unfinished and unrefined sidebar to bring it up to what the old Microsoft would have called ship quality. (With basic UI nonsense like this little update.) And yes, there are several AI-based features spread across Windows 11, like too little butter scraped across too much toast. (Tip of the hat to Tolkien for that turn of phrase.) Things like background removal and Cocreator in Paint, background blur and removal in Paint, text recognition in Snipping Tool, and the like.

These new features are all very nice, and useful. But they also fall into the monthly random new features bucket, and like Copilot, they were all rushed to market. Worse, none of them take advantage of the AI hardware acceleration afforded by the Neural Processing Units (NPUs) that are now available in a growing collection of new PCs. This is a classic chicken/egg problem, in which new AI features need to be good enough to justify PC upgrades, and enough modern PCs need to be in the market to justify making those features more sophisticated. Or something.

We'll get there. But for all the changes we've seen in Windows 11, all the constant churn, it's amazing how little has changed in the day-to-day. The capabilities Microsoft gives away ...