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This is the year that AI (artificial intelligence) breaks into the mainstream thanks to online tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E, and the like. And if nearly 30 years of covering the personal technology market has taught me anything, it’s that we’re going to be inundated with AI-based services and apps, creating a clear dividing line between the past and the future. Everything is about to change.

Hyperbolic? Not at all: AI-based solutions had been creeping into the public consciousness over the past two years or so, thanks in part to the hybrid work improvements we’ve seen in productivity software like Microsoft Teams and Zoom, and in related hardware advances in webcams, microphones, and presence detection sensors, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. But now the Big Bang has occurred, with ChatGPT being the AI shot heard ‘round the world. Google was caught so flat-footed by this revelation that it dusted off its cofounders, reconsidered projects that previously were found to be too creepy (or, knowing Google, too good, which would curtail ad revenue), and has issued a “code red” internally. Now, it will pull out the stops to show the world that it can compete on an even footing with Microsoft and OpenAI.

I have little doubt that Google will be competitive. But the difference between Google and Microsoft, in this specific case, is notable: AI is an existential threat to Google, so any failure on its part could literally kill the company, as could regulatory intervention. But for Microsoft, AI is just a potential growth market. Microsoft is diversified enough to come out of this just fine should Google somehow defeat it.

So how will Microsoft integrate AI into its products and services? The AI Big Bang was so unexpected and so sudden, we’ve had little chance to calmly consider how this change will impact the Microsoft stack. But we have a few details.

We know that Microsoft plans to integrate ChapGPT capabilities into Bing Search, for example, but that’s mostly a curiosity at this point, given how utterly inept and unpopular Bing is today. Bing will need more than ChatGPT to defeat Google Search, and I just don’t see that happening. Consider how Apple Maps, despite years of improvements, has done little to unseat Google Maps on the iPhone. It’s not enough to be very good when the product you’re fighting is the standard. Inertia is a powerful force.

We also know that Microsoft plans to commercialize AI for third parties in the Azure cloud and add ChatGPT-like AI capabilities to “every Microsoft product,” in the words of CEO Satya Nadella. I described that latter bit as AI being “infused” across the Microsoft stack, but at the time I wrote those words, I was mostly thinking in terms of Microsoft 356, or what we still think of as Office. After all, that is the center of Microsoft’s productivity offerings.

But what about Windows?

Windows today is an interesting problem for Microsoft. It’s a ...

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