Kalakshar US

Almost a year since Microsoft announced its controversial Recall feature, and after several delays, the company has finally started bringing it to Copilot+ AI PCs today. The launch comes just a few weeks after Microsoft started testing Recall broadly with Windows Insiders. There are also a few other AI-powered features coming along with this release, including an improved Windows Search and Click to Do, which lets you quickly use AI features from within your existing apps. As usual, the release won’t immediately roll out to all Copilot+ PCs, instead Microsoft is gradually releasing it over the next month (and likely monitoring potential issues along the way).

Recall was one of the biggest announcements at Microsoft’s Copilot+ debut last May, but almost immediately, it came under fire for some glaring privacy issues. At a basic level, Recall constantly records what you’re doing on your PC via screenshots, and it uses AI to search them for specific words and images. The idea is that you’ll never forget where you put a document you were working on weeks ago, or which random website you’ve lost track of. Security and privacy advocates were initially concerned that Recall was automatically enabled on Copilot+ PCs and that it wasn’t storing its database of screenshots securely. That led to an immediate delay for Recall that lasted for several months. 

In November, Microsoft finally revealed how it will make the feature even more secure. Its snapshots and related data will be stored in VBS enclaves, which the company describes as “software-based trusted execution environment (TEE) inside a host application.” Additionally, you’ll have to turn Recall on manually when you set up a Copilot+ machine, it will rely on Windows Hello biometric security to make any settings changes, and it can be completely uninstalled if you want to be rid of it entirely.

While it’s heartening to see Microsoft take security more seriously after all of Recall’s initial criticism, it’s still worrying that it took widespread condemnation for any of it to happen. The company’s rush to deliver a shiny new AI feature to sell Copilot+ PCs, and snub the likes of Google and Apple, ultimately got in the way of delivering the best product for consumers. It’ll be hard to trust Recall, or really any of Microsoft’s AI-enabled Copilot features, because of its initial blunder.

Less controversial is the improved Windows Search, which will let you find documents and images in your own words. That means you shouldn’t have to worry about remembering specific file names or other minutia to find what you need. Like all of the Copilot+ features, including Recall, the improved search runs locally using the neural processing units (NPU) in AI PCs. There’s nothing being sent to the cloud.

I’m personally the least excited about Click to Do, but there may be an audience for people who want easy access to Microsoft’s AI tools. You’ll be able to highlight text and quickly have it summarized or rewritten by Copilot, without dumping it into the Copilot app specifically. You can enable the feature by pressing the Windows key and clicking on your screen, swiping right on a touchscreen or hitting the Click to Do icon as it pops up throughout Windows (you’ll see it in places like the Start menu and Snipping Tool).

Microsoft says Click to Do actions for images are available on all Copilot+ PCs with the new Windows 11 April update, and text actions will be available on Snapdragon systems today, and eventually on Intel and AMD AI PCs.

I’ve briefly used all of these features on a Surface Pro Copilot+ machine using the latest Windows 11 Insider build, but I’ve been waiting to test their official release before making any final judgements. I can say that Recall mostly works as advertised — it was easily able to bring up a document I was viewing a week later, and it quickly found a few websites I was viewing — but it also didn’t add much to my Windows experience. At this point I religiously save websites I need to revisit via Pocket, and I’m well-versed enough in Windows to know where I’ve put my files. Recall isn’t really made for me, though, it’s for less experienced users who just want to find their stuff.

Even power users will like the improved Windows search, though, but that’s only because the platform’s search has always been notoriously awful. And while I’m not a huge proponent of AI text summarization, but Click to Do did a decent job of summarizing a few long articles.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/microsofts-recall-and-improved-windows-search-start-rolling-out-to-copilot-ai-pcs-today-170014913.html?src=rss 

If you’ve performed a Google search lately, you’ve undoubtedly come across an AI Overview in your search results. This tool, powered by Google’s Gemini, tries to save you some clicks by aggregating information from the links populated in your search results and succinctly delivering what it believes to be the information you’re looking for. The accuracy of these overviews, however, often leaves a lot to be desired, and the tool has been plagued with hallucinations since its launch (with varying degrees of hilarity).

Now Google is bringing the tool to YouTube, testing a video version of AI overviews for a small number of YouTube Premium members in the US across limited English search queries. While Google search results show LLM-generated text summaries, YouTube’s AI overviews will function as something of a highlight reel for certain videos.

In a post on YouTube Community forums, Google said that, “This new feature will use AI to highlight clips from videos that will be most helpful for your search query…This is most likely to show when you search for more information about products you’re shopping for (such as ‘best noise cancelling headphones’), or when you search for more information about locations or things to do in those locations (such as ‘museums to visit in San Francisco’).”

This raises some questions about the revenue model for creators on YouTube and how AI-generated clip reels would affect their incomes. A major concern with AI overview in search is Google’s own summary absorbing traffic that would otherwise have gone to the publications shown in the search results. Bringing these tools to YouTube is likely to raise the same concerns for video content creators.

Google will be collecting feedback on these overviews from Premium members, who can vote with a thumbs up or thumbs down on the AI-generated highlight clips. Google hasn’t said how long this pilot will run for, or whether Google intends to expand YouTube’s AI overview to anyone beyond Premium subscribers.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/ai/youtube-is-testing-its-own-version-of-ai-overviews-145353147.html?src=rss 

While the Switch 2 has backwards compatibility, Nintendo is releasing upgraded versions of its old games with enhanced framerates and resolution, as well as extra content. It’s also selling upgrades cheaper than full games, which you can get for titles you already own. The upgrades for The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom will set you back $10. Now, the company has started revealing more upgrade prices for old games, and it looks like the ones for Kirby and the Forgotten Land and Super Mario Party Jamboree will cost you twice as much at $20. 

NintendoLife first posted about the upgrades’ potential prices based on their eShop listings for Europe. The company has updated its US eShop since then to show that they’re also being sold for $20 in the country. If you buy the upgrade for Kirby and the Forgotten Land, you’re getting access to a new part of the game called Star-Crossed World, wherein you have to uncover the mystery surrounding the meteor that struck the world. Meanwhile Super Mario Party Jamboree comes with Jamboree TV, a game show hosted by Toad. The Switch 2 version of the title uses the console’s Joy-Con 2 and microphone, and if you use its camera, you can also put your face into the action during mini-games. 

Super Mario Party Jamboree for the Switch 2 will be available on July 24, while Kirby’s Switch 2 edition will be available on August 28. Both games will set you back $80 if you buy the full Switch 2 version instead of upgrading an old copy. Nintendo has yet to release the prices for the Switch 2 editions of Pokémon Legends: Z-A and Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, which will be available later this year. 

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/gaming/nintendo/nintendo-charges-20-for-mario-party-jamboree-and-kirby-switch-2-upgrades-140031152.html?src=rss 

Beleaguered chipmaker Intel has confirmed plans to restructure in a shift that will involve an unspecified number of layoffs. It was reported this week that the company could lay off around 20 percent of staff (it had 108,900 employees at the end of last year). In a memo, new CEO Lip-Bu Tan declined to detail the extent of the downsizing, which is largely aimed at reducing “unnecessary bureaucracy” and layers of middle management.

“I’m a big believer in the philosophy that the best leaders get the most done with the fewest people. We will embrace this mindset across the company, which will include empowering our top talent to make decisions and take greater ownership of key priorities,” Tan wrote. “There is no way around the fact that these critical changes will reduce the size of our workforce. As I said when I joined, we need to make some very hard decisions to put our company on a solid footing for the future. This will begin in Q2 and we will move as quickly as possible over the next several months.”

Intel has been downsizing significantly over the last few years. Just last August, the company said it would cut more than 15,000 jobs to reduce costs. Intel has been struggling with slowing sales — it didn’t act quickly enough to keep up with the industry’s shift toward artificial intelligence.

Unsurprisingly, AI will be a focus for Intel going forward. “My focus will be ensuring that our team builds products that are highly competitive and meet the needs of our customer as we enter a new era of computing, defined by AI agents and reasoning models,” Tan said in a call with investors on Thursday. “To achieve this, we are taking a holistic approach to redefine our portfolio to optimize our products for new and emerging AI workloads. We are making necessary adjustments to our product roadmap, so that we are positioned to make the best-in-class products while staying laser focused on execution and ensuring on time delivery.”

Tan is aiming to speed things up by turning Intel into a company that’s focused on engineering. “Many of the changes we will be driving are designed to make engineers more productive by removing burdensome workflows and processes that slow down the pace of innovation,” he wrote. The company is planning to reduce costs elsewhere in order to “make necessary investments in our engineering talent and technology roadmaps.” It’s hoping to lower its operating expenses by $1.5 billion over the next two years.

Efficiencies are the name of the game here. Tan wants managers to get rid of unnecessary meetings and reduce the number of people who attend meetings as “too much valuable time is being wasted.” Intel is also expanding its return-to-office mandate by requiring workers to be on site four days a week (up from three) starting in September.

Tan certainly has lofty goals as he looks to turn around Intel’s fortunes. “I’m talking about the opportunity to fundamentally reinvent an industry icon. To pull off a comeback that will be studied in business schools for generations to come. To create new technologies and deploy them at scale to change the world for the better,” he wrote. “Intel was once widely seen as the world’s most innovative company. There’s no reason we can’t get back there, so long as we drive the changes needed to improve.”

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/intel-confirms-layoffs-as-it-tries-to-make-engineers-more-productive-143825752.html?src=rss