Microsoft introduces AI button to keyboards in biggest redesign in 30 years

Microsoft has announced plans to introduce a special button to summon AI on its devices.

The tech giant will introduce the button which will open up a chatbot on its systems to help users.

Think of it like the paperclip, but powered by artificial intelligence instead of popping up when you're trying to type up a university essay about three hours before the deadline.

Starting from this month some personal computers which use Microsoft operating systems will have the 'Co-Pilot' feature on the keyboard.

And no, this not Airplane where an inflatable copy of you will appear to do your work, but will open up an AI assistant.

Introducing an AI key on keyboards could be a way for Microsoft to capitalise on its ongoing relationship with OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT.

This could position Microsoft as a gateway for the application of generative AI in everyday computer use.

At present most people connect to AI using phones, but this could make AI more readily available on desktop computers.

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AI companies continue to compete to improve their services despite many ethical and legal concerns about how the technology could be applied.

For example, The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft, with the lawsuit alleging that tools such as ChatGPT used copyrighted news articles.

AI does not truly 'create' the content that we frequently see posted online. It works by drawing on a database of information that it has 'learned'.

This means that anything generated by AI can only be an aggregation of things which already exist, rather than truly original work.

For example if someone asked AI to generate, say, a picture of Batman in the style of Picasso, it would search its database for Picasso paintings and Batman and then mix those together to give you the image.

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The problem here is that artists can see their work used to generate images which look very similar to it without any credit or acknowledgement.

Nonetheless, Microsoft is powering ahead with AI development.

The introduction of the AI key on Microsoft keyboards could well be the biggest change since the introduction of the Windows key in the 1990s.

Today, the Windows key has been a regular fixture on the keyboards for some 30 years.

The new button will be marked with the copilot logo, which looks like a ribbon.

It will be located near to the space bar, replacing the right 'CTRL' key on some computers and the 'menu' key on others.

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