Snapdragon X Copilot+ PC: AI experiences in the box

With Copilot+ PC, Microsoft is shifting the marketing of Windows 11 to Arm from efficiency and uptime to AI. I think that’s a mistake: this platform offers a unique combination of performance, efficiency and battery life in thin and light laptops that go a long way towards undermining the perennial advantages of the Apple Silicon-based MacBook Air. Additionally, the AI ​​experiences included with Copilot+ computers are underwhelming and provide no justification for spending $1,000 or more on a new laptop.

This is especially true now that the only truly compelling Copilot+ PC AI experience, Recall, was pulled from the product literally at the last minute: Recall would have used some of the small language models (SLM) pre-installed in Copilot+ computers such as Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x 14 Gen 9 Now I’m reviewing to provide a comprehensive solution for finding documents, web pages and other information you’ve worked with in the past. But now we have to wait: Recall will first be made available for testing through the Windows Insider Program, which no PC Copilot+ buyer should risk participating in, and then made available in preview later this year .

Until then, AI’s choices are few, so to speak.

Copilot+ PCs ship with the initial release of Windows 11 version 24H2, which anyone can upgrade now if they want, and which offers some regular updates compared to its predecessors. But Copilot+ PCs differentiate themselves – or at least try to – from other 24H2-based PCs by offering a small range of AI experiences that leverage Snapdragon X’s powerful NPU (Neural Processing Unit) and SML its supposed 40+ pre-installed.

This won’t take long.

Auto Super Resolution (Auto SR)

Auto SR (super resolution) enhances video games in real time and is unique to Copilot+ computers. I’ve experienced this playing two games, so far, Punishment (2016) and control, as noted in the Snapdragon X Copilot+ PC: Gaming on the go. From what I can tell, it lets you run x64 emulated games at a lower resolution, which improves performance and framerate, while using AI to improve visual quality so it looks like the game is running at a higher resolution. up.

When it works, it works well: I spent about two hours playing Punishment yesterday after and was really impressed with the smooth performance and visual quality. But like many features of the Copilot+ computer, there are limitations: Auto SR only works with games, although it seems that this technology can also benefit video playback. And only with select games, around 100 or so during this launch period. And it takes a lot of beating.

One thing I *have* learned from my initial Auto SR experience: You can configure it on the fly for specific games, and that’s why my Punishment the experience was very good. There’s an interface at Settings > System > Display > Graphics where you can specify your GPU preference, toggle Auto SR, and optimize for windowed play on a game-by-game basis.

In other words, if you’re not getting the performance and visual quality you want, check out the game and turn on Auto Superresolution. It just might do the trick and make an unplayable, playable game.

Co-creator at Paint

If you’re familiar with the AI ​​features Microsoft has added to Paint over the past year or so – Remove Background and Image Creator, both of which are great – then Cocreator will do OTHER USEFUL meaning. The difference, of course, is that these two previous features don’t require or even use the NPU, where Cocreator does. So you won’t see a Cocreator option in the Paint pseudo-ribbon unless you have a Copilot+ computer.

Cocreator lets you enter a text message (like Image Creator, and optimized for English for now) and/or a drawing of your creation – best done with a stylus on a 2-in-1 tablet, I think – and then use as a resource for a more professional looking creation. I’ve seen Microsoft and Qualcomm offer the same demo of this feature several times already, where they create a finger-painting-like image of a turtle and then Cocreator turns it into a better image of a turtle.

But I’m working off a laptop here, so I created a simple image of the earth with some stars and the moon. You know, like a child. And then I added the request “Add a spaceship flying by the earth at the bottom”. And before I hit enter, it started generating an image. Which was pretty terrible.

You can change the style to watercolor, oil painting, ink sketch, anime or pixel art. And there is a Creativity slider, the use of which is not clear. So I looked at it: “Lower creativity means less AI input and the result will be closer to your sketch. Higher creativity means more AI input and the output will be more imaginative and diverse.” And sure enough, switching that to 95 on the slider made a nice difference.

But the image was still off. This made me wonder if this tool could be used to take a high quality image and remove it. So I opened an image that Copilot had made for me earlier. And I added a prompt to see what would happen. OK, that’s interesting. And dialing the Creativity slider up and down made a difference.

But I’m not sure HOW useful this is: I use the image creation function of Copilot (Designer) every day and I really like it. This seems more… random. And much less useful.

Image maker in pictures

As with Paint, anyone with Windows 11 can use a number of (non-NPU) features in the Photos app, such as Generative Erase, and Background Blur, Remove and Replace.

With a Copilot+ computer, you get a few more AI features, and these features use the computer’s NPU. (Again, just like with Paint.)

The first is an Image Maker, but this one comes with a twist: instead of hitting the cloud and costing Microsoft a few cents each time, it uses the NPU to access local SLMs. The resulting images are lower quality and (much) smaller resolution (512 x 512 pixels) than what we get through the cloud with Copilot/Designer, and they are limited to a square aspect ratio for some reason. But where Copilot/Designer creates four images with each request, the Photo Image Creator creates multiple images and you can continue creations by scrolling through the thumbnail list.

To test this feature, I used a request that I had previously used with Copilot/Designer: “A small apple, rotten with a bite, on the edge of a large market of fresh fruits and vegetables of all kinds, with a the light that shines upon him from above.” And … yes. Not even close.

I like that it has a Creativity slider, like with Cocreate in Paint, and style choices. I also like that you can create variations of a selected image. But this feature is a non-starter: it doesn’t do what you want, and the quality is at resolutions too low to be useful.

There is also a “Restyle Image” feature along with Blur, Remove and Replace in the background. It uses AI facial detection capabilities to analyze a photo and restyle it using a text message or one of several style options like Fantasy, Anime, Surrealism, Impressionist and more.

The results are interesting, but not what I expected: Impressionist Selection turned the background of a photo of my wife into a high-quality painting, but left my wife in her original photographic style. That said, I like that it shows you the order each choice generates.

And the surprisingly common Creativity slider is ready to exaggerate this effect. I’d rather she styled the whole picture, including my wife. And as it turns out, there’s a drop-down list below that Creativity slider that lets you configure which parts of the photo are affected. It is set to “Background Only”, but there are also “Reset All” and “Foreground Only” choices. Sadly, but perhaps understandably, Microsoft doesn’t allow Restyle Image to reshape — or as it puts it, “distort” human faces.

With that in mind, I tested this feature with some photos that don’t contain people. A plate of fried eggs, for example.

And a sunset. Both very beautiful.

This may literally be the single best AI feature you get with a Copilot+ computer. For now…

Live subtitles with real-time language translation

Live Captions is one of the best features in Windows 11. And because it works with any app that outputs audio, you can use it for online dating, regardless of service, or with apps like YouTube.

With a Copilot+ PC, Live Captions adds support for real-time English translations from over 40 languages. (I assume it will eventually support two-way translations in all supported languages.) My testing options here are limited: I’m only fluent in English, but I know a little Spanish, so I asked for a Spanish-language video. understand well enough to test how well the live translation feature works.

Pretty good, it seems. A Spanish language learning video was about the right speed and I could see that the translation was pretty good. I’d like to test this more, but we’re limited by my limitations here. And it should support more languages.

Windows Studio effects with creative filters

In my recent review of the HP ZBook Firefly 14 G11, I noticed that it supported Windows Studio Effects, thanks to its NPU, but not all effects. However, with a Copilot+ computer and its more powerful NPU, you get the full meal deal.

I’m in front of the camera a lot thanks to the various podcasts I participate in, and while I see the appeal of some of these tools, the sad reality is that I can’t use any of them. But there are some neat things there. Auto framing and portrait lighting are pretty straightforward. And eye contact is as creepy as ever, though it does offer two sub-choices in Yoga, Standard and Teleprompter, that I wouldn’t have seen before.

Background effects work as usual, with standard blur and portrait blur options. But I had never seen the Creative filters before, and they are fun. You get three choices: Illustrated, Water Color and Animated.

And they all run right off the NPU, which is important: otherwise, they’ll be hitting your CPU or GPU, killing your battery life.

Key relationships

It’s clear that Microsoft was counting on Recall to make a big splash with Copilot+ PC, as the remaining NPU-powered AI experiences are a mixed bag of mostly US English-only tools spread across a handful of apps on box. Some are great, like Restyle Image in Photos. But most feel half-hearted, or at least not fully implemented.

As I’ve noted elsewhere, the real value of Windows 11, as always, isn’t what you get with the OS, it’s what you get with the third-party apps you install on Windows. That is, no one uses Windows for Windows, we use Windows for applications.

Here again, the selection of NPU-powered experiences is easy and heavily skewed toward video editors, photo editors, and creative-type apps. Of course it is.

But that’s a topic for another day: I hope there will be more to choose from by the time I get there.