Microsoft's Surface launch is on March 21 - and could be where AI really steps up to the plate

Microsoft has revealed that it's holding an online event on March 21 where it'll announce some new AI features for Windows and Copilot, with new (unspecified) Surface devices to boot.

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Expect new Surface devices and that should include the next iteration of the Surface Pro (Image Credit: Microsoft)

Given that the event is entitled a 'New Era of Work' that certainly hints at some pretty major introductions in the pipeline, and as Windows Latest reports, one of the AI features that's supposedly going to be teased is for Windows 11's Paint app.

As previously rumored, this might be a 'LiveCanvas' feature that's akin to the capability seen in Leonardo.Ai. This allows you to sketch a very rough picture, and an AI will fully realize it (and you can use text prompts to direct the AI further in its image composition).

It's essentially a sketch-based equivalent of Dall-E, or it could be, if the rumor mill is right. Whatever the case, if Windows Latest is correct, we'll get to see a teaser of the feature - and then we'll know if it's this for sure.

The catch with this, and all Microsoft's AI features, is that they'll need a processor with an NPU to work. These are the centerpiece of Microsoft's long-touted new AI PCs, which will include the rumored to be inbound Surface Pro 10 and Surface Laptop 6. (We know some Surface devices are coming, as mentioned, and Zac Bowden of Windows Central is pretty insistent that these two devices are what we'll be getting at the event).

AI supercharged PC-wide search

The other key AI feature is thought to be AI Explorer, which despite the name, is nothing to do with File Explorer (although there have been rumors previously that File Explorer will get some kind of Copilot integration, and that'll probably happen).

AI Explorer will purportedly be an overarching timeline of your entire usage history of your PC, a powerful tool letting you use AI to search for anything via a natural language query. So, for example, if you know you wrote a recipe for a curry in a document, but can't remember what it's called or where you put it, you can simply ask: "Find me that curry recipe."

AI Explorer will then rifle through your files, accelerated by the NPU, and locate the necessary document (hopefully) and anything else on your PC related to the topic of cooking and curries. That's the theory proposed by Bowden anyway (minus the specific reference to curries, of course).

This is a big one, then, so mark your calendar for March 21. According to Bowden, new Intel (Meteor Lake) and Snapdragon (X Elite, or a variant of that) CPUs will be huge leaps forward for performance and battery life with the new Surface models - and it'll be the first time the Surface Laptop 6 offers an ARM option. Add seasoning to all this, naturally.

• Read more: Windows 11's Copilot AI might take over your desktop in the future
• Read more: Microsoft urged to extend Windows 10's lifespan or face 'biggest jump in junked computers ever'