Microsoft Quietly Drops Copilot Plus PC Name
Self-Portrait — Anton Raphael Mengs, 1776
What Happened
Microsoft's new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop meet the technical requirements for a Copilot Plus PC, but the company isn't calling them that anymore. Surface VP Brett Ostrom confirmed the branding is gone. Qualcomm's Kedar Kondap suggested future devices likely won't use it either.
Why It Matters
The brand was supposed to mark which PCs had real AI muscle. Then Recall landed badly, the AI upsells got annoying, and basically every new PC ended up qualifying anyway — which meant the label stopped telling anyone anything. Microsoft's flagship hardware is also shifting to Nvidia chips, and a name that can't survive its own hardware roadmap was never going to last.
What's Next
Microsoft holds an event October 7th on 'local AI' in PCs — the Verge's Sean Hollister guesses this is likely where replacement branding shows up, though this is speculation, not confirmed.