Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

AMD and Intel are being locked out of Copilot+ — for now

AMD CEO Lisa Su presenting performance for Ryzen AI CPUs.
AMD
Computex 2024 logo.
This story is part of our coverage of Computex, the world's biggest computing conference.

AMD and Intel are missing the Copilot+ boat. Despite AMD launching its Ryzen AI 300 CPUs and Intel previewing its Lunar Lake chips at Computex 2024, it seems like these components won’t support the AI features available to Copilot+ PCs at launch. Instead, they’ll get support in the future through a software update.

Ryzen AI 300 and Lunar Lake both come with a neural processing unit (NPU) that meets Microsoft’s requirements for a Copilot+ PC, but Microsoft is initially restricting access to features like Recall and Auto Super Resolution to laptops with Snapdragon X Elite and Plus chips, reports The Verge

Recommended Videos

James Howell, a marketing manager from Microsoft, told the outlet that free updates will provide AMD and Intel PCs that meet the requirements with the AI features “when available.” AMD’s Matthew Hurwitz weighed in and told the outlet that it expects Copilot+ before the end of 2024, but Microsoft and Intel wouldn’t confirm any timeline.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

It doesn’t seem like anyone is clear on when these features are arriving, in fact. During a Q&A session following Intel’s Lunar Lake reveal, Michelle Holthaus, executive vice president of client computing for Intel, said that the company is “waiting for Microsoft to tell us when devices will have a day-one update.”

On June 14, AMD chief marketing officer John Taylor said that the company is targeting Copilot+ availability for later this year on LinkedIn.

During the same Q&A session, Holthaus said that the rollout for Lunar Lake will happen from the end of the year through February of next year. Although we’ll get the first laptops packing these chips sooner, there’s a good chance Microsoft will hold out on a software update for AMD and Intel until there’s broader availability.

There very well could be some exclusivity deal that Microsoft has inked with Qualcomm as well. Qualcomm has referred to itself as the “exclusive” platform for Copilot+ PCs, and Microsoft has signed deals with Qualcomm in the past. One ended in 2021 and another at the beginning of 2024. We don’t have any reporting on an exclusivity deal for Qualcomm and Microsoft for Copilot+, so treat this as speculation. Still, there’s clearly some reason that Microsoft is holding back Copilot+ updates for AMD and Intel.

As we’ve written about previously, Microsoft’s push for Copilot+ has just as much to do with AI as it does with enabling Windows on Arm. Qualcomm certainly sees a bright future on Windows, too. The company’s CEO has said previously that it’s “not going anywhere” in PCs, suggesting that we could see desktops and other form factors packing Snapdragon chips in the future.

AMD and Intel will eventually receive Copilot+ features, but you shouldn’t expect them at launch. Although AMD’s new chips are arriving in July and Intel will follow suit shortly after, it could be several months before Microsoft enables the software for Copilot+ on these devices.

Jacob Roach
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Jacob Roach is the lead reporter for PC hardware at Digital Trends. In addition to covering the latest PC components, from…
Microsoft’s Copilot Vision arrives to surf the web with select users
The Copilot logo

Microsoft's new Copilot Vision feature that can “see what you see, and hear what you hear” while you navigate the internet is finally being made available, though only to a limited number of Copilot Pro subscribers in the U.S.

"Starting today, we are introducing an experience where – with your permission – Copilot can now understand the full context of what you’re doing online," according to a Microsoft blog post. "When you choose to enable Copilot Vision, it sees the page you're on, it reads along with you, and you can talk through the problem you're facing together."

Read more
Intel’s Battlemage might beat Nvidia and AMD to the punch
Intel Arc A770 GPU installed in a test bench.

Out of all the GPU news we've been getting in the last few weeks, information about Intel Arc Battlemage has been pretty scarce, Now, it appears that Intel might still surprise us. According to a new leak, Intel's next-gen desktop GPUs might join the ranks of the best graphics cards as early as next month. Launching in December would certainly give Intel an unexpected edge over AMD and Nvidia, and it's an edge that it could really use right now.

As always with these types of leaks, we're working with a vague message and reading into it to try and figure out what's going on. In this instance, the gossip comes from Golden Pig Upgrade Pack on Weibo, a user with a pretty good reputation.

Read more
AMD buying Intel? It’s on the table
A tray of Intel Core Ultra CPUs.

We think of AMD and Intel as exactly what they are -- fierce rivals. However, the U.S. government is encouraging Intel to consider a merger with a rival, such as AMD, to counteract the intense financial trouble the company has been in over the past several months, according to a report from Semafor.

Intel just released its earnings for the third quarter of the year, where the company revealed that it had lost $16.6 billion. Year-over-year, Intel's net profit margin has dropped by 6,064.76%. That's not a typo. Intel is bleeding money, and according to the report, the U.S. government sees the chipmaker as too important to go under. At the moment, Semafor reports that talks between the government and Intel are "purely precautionary," but multiple options to recover the brand are on the table.

Read more