Windows 11 is getting a lot more AI soon, as Microsoft outlines plans to help developers improve third-party apps
Windows 11 is getting more AI capabilities. That’s a given, especially considering Microsoft’s big push behind Copilot+ PCs, also known as AI PCs. And we can expect more of these capabilities in the future, beyond the OS and the default apps.
While Microsoft will of course introduce new features that leverage AI to Windows 11 and its own default apps, the company is also encouraging third-party app developers to do the same.
Windows Latest saw that Microsoft has published a new support FAQ that provides an introduction to AI and how it can be usefully integrated into a third-party application for Windows 11 for a variety of purposes.
That includes discussing running AI tasks locally (on the device, using a powerful NPU to accelerate them, as seen on the aforementioned Copilot+ PCs – and with the withdrawn Recall feature for Windows 11) or in the cloud (sending tasks to be processed remotely).
The document then dives into some technical details, such as which AI models a developer might want to use or which programming languages are preferred when integrating AI into a Windows 11 app.
Analysis: The future is of course AI
Obviously, these aren’t details the average consumer wants to know – although some of the FAQs are surprisingly simple and understandable for anyone, even going so far as to introduce an NPU – but the point here is that Microsoft is making significant efforts to help third-party developers use AI in their apps.
We’ve seen evidence of this before. The biggest developments for Copilot+ PCs and Windows 11 have been new features for the desktop operating system and the boosting of Microsoft’s own apps with AI. But we can expect to see many more of these developments coming soon to a wide range of third-party software programs.
This is really the bottom line: we’re going to have a lot more AI features everywhere in Windows 11 next year. It’ll be interesting to see how many of these capabilities require an NPU for acceleration, and thus how much that pushes Copilot+ PCs – or desktop PC upgrades to processors with powerful NPUs (like Intel Arrow Lake, according to rumors). Interesting times ahead, as they say.
