Microsoft News Roundup: Copilot in Microsoft 365, ‘Adults Only’ Xbox controller, Dell ARM laptop, and GPT-4 powering Bing
Microsoft continues to roll out and announce new AI features, many of which topped the headlines this week. The tech giant unveiled Copilot for several Microsoft 365 apps during a live event this week. It also confirmed that the new Bing is powered by GPT-4.
In addition to AI news, Dell launched its first Windows on ARM laptop and Walmart made an error in a listing for the Xbox Wireless Controller that drew a few laughs and looks.
Microsoft AI event
Microsoft held its “Future of Work with AI” event this week. Copilot was the main focus. It’s an AI-powered tool that extends across Microsoft 365 apps and services, including Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Viva, and Teams.
Copilot uses AI to gain insights from documents to create content. For example, it can look through a Word document and then make a PowerPoint presentation based on the text in that document.
Microsoft also announced Business Chat, which uses Microsoft Graph and AI to gather information from documents, presentations, emails, notes, calendars, and more.
We have a recap of everything announced at Microsoft’s AI event to help you catch up.
Bing wait list seems to disappear
When the new Bing powered by ChatGPT launched in preview earlier this year, those that wanted to use it had to add their name to a wait list. That no longer seems to be the case. Multiple members of our team were able to sign up for the new Bing without any waiting period.
Microsoft has not shared any official word regarding a change for the signup process, so there’s a chance that some may have to use the wait list. For now, you can use our guide on how to sign up for the new Bing, which should work regardless of if you have to wait or not.
If you’d like to use the new Bing but don’t want to use Microsoft Edge, that’s now possible. You can now use Bing chat in any browser, thanks to some handy extensions.
GPT-4 powers Bing
Speaking of Bing, Microsoft confirmed that its revamped search engine is powered by GPT-4. The new Bing has run on that technology since it launched in preview earlier this year, but Microsoft had not stated that publicly. That was because OpenAI hadn’t announced GPT-4 until this week.
GPT-4 is the latest version of OpenAI’s Large Language Model (LLM). It’s more powerful and more capable than GPT-3.5. Most notably, GPT-4 is multimodal, meaning it can accept images as well as text as input.
Dell Windows 11 on ARM laptop
Dell just launched its first Windows on ARM laptop. The Dell Inspiron 14 with Qualcomm runs on a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 processor and features a 14-inch display. While that CPU is an older flagship (initially launched in late 2020), it is still powerful enough for most everyday tasks.
Importantly, the Inspiron 14 with Qualcomm costs just $499. That makes it an affordable laptop, especially when compared to other PCs with similar specs.
‘Adults Only’ Xbox controller
Due to what was likely an error, the Xbox Wireless Controller was marked as “Adults Only” on Walmart’s website this week. Only the Carbon Black model held that label, as all other colors were marked for “Everyone.” Walmart has since changed the listing for the Carbon Black model to reflect its family-friendly nature (assuming you play games appropriate for a person’s age).
The sale on that controller has also changed. It was once down to $40 but now costs $47.92. That’s still a discount compared to the usual price though. Microsoft has similar deals on the red and white versions of the controller.
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