With an Artificial Intelligence key, Microsoft announces the biggest change to its keyboard in 30 years

Microsoft products introduce the first significant change in 30 years: direct access to Copilot, the firm’s artificial intelligence system.

Microsoft has announced the biggest change to its keyboards in three decades with the introduction of a key dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI).

This shortcut will allow users to access Copilot, Microsoft’s artificial intelligence tool, on new PCs equipped with Windows 11.

The company founded by Bill Gates is a major investor in OpenAI, which is behind the operation of Copilot.

The multinational has already integrated artificial intelligence into other company products such as Microsoft 365 and Bing search in 2023.

Its rival Apple several years ago included a button or option to call Siri in the touch bar of its Macbooks.

Copilot helps users with functions like searching, writing emails, and creating images.

In the article announcing the change, Microsoft executive vice president Yusuf Mehdi said it was a “transformative” moment and compared it to the moment the Windows key was added almost 30 years ago.

He added that the new access would “simplify” and “amplify” the user experience.

The new keyboards are expected to appear in Microsoft products starting in February.

The company will showcase some of the products with Copilot access at one of the biggest tech events of the year, CES, which begins next week in Las Vegas.

When Copilot was integrated into Office 365 products like Word, PowerPoint, and Teams, it allowed users to summarize their meetings, write emails, and create presentations.

Copilot has also been added to the Bing search engine.

Google, by far the largest search engine in the world, has its own artificial intelligence system called Bard.

However, it was Microsoft partner OpenAI that introduced its powerful AI tool ChatGPT in 2022, prompting rivals to rush to release their own versions.

Copilot is based on the GPT-4 language model, also from OpenAI.

The UK’s competition watchdog is investigating Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI after a series of boardroom layoffs resulted in a close relationship between the two companies.