Software & Apps News - Page 1

Microsoft is preparing to announce one of, if not the biggest change to Windows in its existence, which is the inclusion of artificial intelligence-powered tools.

The company is set to showcase its latest integrations of AI into PCs at the Build developers conference on Tuesday. According to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who said in January 2024, AI will become the "first-class part of every PC". That shift has already begun with the inclusion of Copilot chatbot assistant in Microsoft's Bing search engine, and direct integration into Windows 11.

What users can expect out of tomorrow's conference is Microsoft explaining how AI will become fully integrated into Windows, specifically Windows 11, and what users will be able to do on the next generation of AI PCs. More specifically, AI PCs will have a two-purpose goal: increase the number of PC sales and maintain Microsoft's position in the AI industry via AI being rolled out to millions of Windows users.

What would happen if you installed Windows XP in 2024, set the internet connection to be fully open without any firewalls or anti-virus software, and just let the computer sit there idling? If you answered, malware and hackers would obtain full access to the file system and admin privileges in minutes - then you'd be on the right track.

YouTuber Eric Parker decided to run an experiment to see how dangerous running Windows XP in 2024 is, and the results were alarming. Without browning downloading or opening suspicious files, the PC (a virtual installation) was immediately infected by malware. Granted, the Windows XP Firewall was disabled, too, but it's wild to think how vulnerable XP was/is to attacks.

All you need to do is go online with Windows XP, and you're open to all manner of malware, Trojans, new admin accounts being created, and even an FTP server starting, which all happens here.

Behind the scenes, Microsoft is working on rolling out a slew of new artificial intelligence-powered features for Windows 11 users, and now the company has implemented a dedicated section within the Settings menu for "AI components".

The new addition to the Settings menu was discovered in Windows 11 Build 26217, and isn't officially mentioned by Microsoft within its official blog post for the build. Notably, the new feature is available to developers and testers in the Canary alpha channel, and at the moment it's up for interpretation on what this new feature will do. Presumably, it will track all of the updates for coming AI features such as AI Explorer and Copilot, which was recently rolled out to Windows 11 users' taskbars.

There is also the possibility that "AI component updates" will not only be for AI-powered apps or features but also for hardware dedicated to running AI-based operations locally. Reports indicate Microsoft is preparing for its upcoming Build Developer conference later this year, which is associated with the company encouraging developers to take advantage of Windows and build their own AI features.

Microsoft has made a rather odd move in trying to promote Bing search in Windows 11 with a change to its PC Manager app.

If you're not familiar with PC Manager, well, we wouldn't be surprised, as it's not an app that all that many folks know about - partly because it's only available in certain regions for Windows 11 (and not the US, not officially yet - but that could well change).

At any rate, it's a PC performance boosting utility from Microsoft China, that takes a typical approach with file cleanup features to free up storage, memory, and so forth.

Mozilla Firefox is a popular open-source browser that is one of the few non-Chromium-based options out there. It's the latest to incorporate support for NVIDIA RTX Video technology, which uses GeForce RTX hardware to improve video streaming quality and performance.

RTX Video covers two key technologies: RTX Video Super Resolution and RTX Video HDR. The former is like DLSS for YouTube; it taps into NVIDIA's powerful AI-based Tensor hardware to make low-resolution video look cleaner, crisper, and more detailed while also minimizing and even eliminating compression artifacts. It's tailor-made for video streaming applications and services like YouTube, Prime Video, and Disney+ - while also being beneficial for those with spotty connections.

RTX Video HDR adds another layer by converting SDR video content to HDR with excellent results that improve color vibrancy and detail. NVIDIA notes that 90% of all videos online are 1080p or lower and in SDR, which makes the RTX Video technology suite a way for GeForce RTX owners to remaster and upscale the video content they watch.

Windows 11 just got its latest cumulative update and there's some good and bad news here - the latter being the fact that adverts are officially debuting in the Start menu.

If you've been following the story of adverts creeping into Windows 11, you might have noticed that with last month's preview (optional) update, a new form of promotion appeared in the Start menu - suggested Microsoft Store apps picked from certain developers.

Windows Latest observes that this is now rolling out to all Windows 11 users with the latest patch released yesterday (KB5037771).

Microsoft's most-popular operating system, Windows 10, will lose support for new drivers on AMD's next-generation CPU platform, according to reports.

Windows 10 is by far Microsoft's most popular operating system, with the company actively thinking up new ways to push users onto Windows 11 following the announcement it was ending support for the operating system in October 2025. Now, a new report from TechSpot citing a Weibo post from someone who claims to be Lenovo's China manager, AMD won't provide Windows 10 drivers for its Zen 5 CPUs, specifically starting with its Zen 5 Strix Point APUs.

Why would AMD choose to go down this route? It may not have anything to do with Microsoft directly but with the emergence and now importance of AI-based capabilities. The report states AMD is - like many other big tech companies - shifting its focus to AI performance, which is paramount for Zen 5 to be successful. Unfortunately, AI-based capabilities aren't likely to be coming to an old operating system such as Windows 10, especially when it will be hitting its end-of-support phase next year.

Microsoft is ushering in fresh AI capabilities for its Edge browser, and this new work pertains to customizing the app.

Windows Latest was keen-eyed enough to spot that an incoming feature called the 'AI theme generator' for Edge is part of a Microsoft 365 roadmap.

It'll work pretty much as you'd expect: you tell the AI what kind of theme you want via a simple text prompt, and it'll knock up some concepts along those lines that you can peruse.

Microsoft has previously confirmed that it has been breached by hackers from both China and Russia, and now the US government wants to talk about it.

The House Committee on Homeland Security has selected Microsoft's vice chair and president, Brad Smith, to attend a hearing called "A Cascade of Security Failures: Assessing Microsoft Corporation's Cybersecurity Shortfalls and the Implications for Homeland Security." For those that don't know, Microsoft has recently been put under the microscope by security researchers and the US government following a slew of security breaches.

Prominent incidents that likely caught the attention of Homeland Security were the attack on Microsoft Exchange in June 2023 that resulted in senior US government officials having their emails compromised - approximately 60,000, and the January 2024 attack by Midnight Blizzard. The latter of the two was traced back to Russia, and the breach resulted in Midnight Blizzard breaking into the email accounts of Microsoft executives and stealing messages and files from the leadership team.

It was only a few weeks ago that Microsoft continued with its plan to roll out a controversial Windows 11 update that implemented new advertisements into Windows 11, and now users have spotted yet another additional promotion now baked into Windows.

The new advertisement from a few weeks ago was implementing a "Recommended" section within Windows 11's Start menu. This new section first began testing within Microsoft's Insider program and according to Microsoft the recommendations within the section will be for apps sourced from a "small set of curated developers" that will meet Microsoft's quality standards. Notably, users are able to switch off recommendations within the Personalization section of Windows 11.

Now, Microsoft has rolled out a new advertisement within the "Settings" option for Windows, and this advertisement is for its Game Pass subscription service. The advertisement was discovered in the latest Dev channel version 26120.470 (KB5037864). The new Game Pass promotion ties in with the company's previous statements regarding Game Pass growth on PC still being present, while it stagnating on Xbox consoles.