Microsoft desires so as to add a Copilot key to your PC keyboard

Microsoft would love 2024 to be the “year of the AI PC” and to place a degree on that, the corporate at this time introduced a brand new key for Copilot — that’s, a bodily key that can quickly make its strategy to your keyboard and be a part of the Home windows key, along with its associates the Management key, Alt and that Insert key you’ve by no means purposely used. Based mostly on the picture Microsoft despatched over, it seems to be like the brand new Copilot key will change the suitable Management key on the usual PC keyboard, the place it would 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, Government Vice President & Shopper Chief Advertising and marketing Officer, writes in at this time’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 just isn’t out there, the Copilot key will launch Home windows Search. The primary keyboards with the brand new key will launch at this 12 months’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 prepare, the truth that it now, for the primary time for the reason that Home windows emblem key appeared on a Microsoft Pure Keyboard in 1994, including a brand new button is all it is advisable know.

Microsoft, along with its chip companions like AMD and Intel, hopes that a variety 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Fortunately, your outdated keyboards will proceed to perform identical to earlier than — and in case your keyboard permits, chances are you’ll even be capable to remap your proper Management key to perform just like the Copilot key. Or you’ll be able to ignore the entire thing, in fact.