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After months of hype, the Snapdragon X Series and Copilot+ laptops are finally here. We’re entering a new era of AI PCs, as is evident with the highly impressive Surface Pro 11. However, the journey we’ve taken to get here has been anything but smooth. Microsoft had quite a PR catastrophe with Recall, their biggest Copilot+ feature. On top of that, Copilot+ features are only limited to certain laptops with a Snapdragon X Series chip for now.

Not everyone will be willing to jump on the Windows on ARM train immediately either. I get it, new hardware is exciting, but it might be a good idea to let early adopters deal with the issues first. Fortunately, you don’t necessarily need to run out and buy a new device to get access to some new features. Instead, you can replicate these features with alternative tools and workarounds on your existing Windows PC.

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3 reasons you shouldn’t buy an AI PC just to get the latest Copilot+ features

The new lineup of Snapdragon X laptops look fantastic, but if you’re buying them for Copilot+, you’re doing it all wrong.

4 AI Image Manipulation – Adobe Photoshop

Generative fill is surprisingly powerful

Last year, Microsoft Paint received incredible generative AI upgrades thanks to DALL-E 3. You can now type a prompt in the Paint app, choose an art style, and have the Image Creator feature generate artwork for you. There’s also a Cocreator feature in Paint that takes text prompts and sketches as input. As you draw, Cocreator will change the generative artwork on the fly. Unfortunately, while the Image Creator feature is available for everyone, Cocreator is limited to Copilot+ PCs.

Luckily, this sort of AI trick can be easily replicated, and Adobe already has a fantastic alternative called Generative Fill. Powered by Adobe’s Firefly AI model, this Photoshop tool allows you to select any part of a reference image and replace it with an AI-generated element. The best part is that it doesn’t just add a random element, it matches the perspective, lighting, and style — and it’s scarily good.

In addition to Generative Fill, Adobe Photoshop offers a wide range of AI tools that rival other Copilot+ image manipulation tricks. For example, the Neural Filters feature lets you apply various filters and effects to your images using AI — similar to the Copilot+ Image Restyler feature.

Adobe has added a lot more AI features using the Firefly model, and you can find these new features in Photoshop, Illustrator, Lightroom, and other Adobe apps.

3 Video recording features – Nvidia Broadcast

Virtual green screen? Yes, please!

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Copilot+ brings Windows Studio Effectsa set of features that will allow you to change your appearance and background while you’re recording or on a video call. You can blur the background, change filters, adjust the lighting, and even correct eye contact. It works surprisingly well; but, if you own an Nvidia GeForce RTX graphics card, you can use Nvidia Broadcast for the same purpose.

This Nvidia app can eliminate background noise, remove your background to add a green screen-like effect, track your face movement with Auto Frameand correct eye contact. So, it pretty much has everything that Windows Studio Effects offers. The only catch is you need a GeForce RTX 2060 GPU or above.

If you don’t have a compatible graphics card, I have another great alternative: XSplit VCam. It has similar features to Nvidia Broadcast and Windows Studio Effects but has wider compatibility (it even works on Mac!). The only problem with Nvidia Broadcast and VCam is that they require more setup, but they’re well worth the trouble because of their comprehensive features.

2 The Copilot key

You can just remap an existing key

Earlier this year, a lot of manufacturers started adding a Copilot key to laptops with AI capabilities. This signified that Microsoft has a lot riding on AI and Copilot, as changing the keyboard layout on Windows laptops is not a small step. All upcoming Copilot+ PCs will have this key, and you can use it to quickly launch the Copilot assistant. There will likely be more functionality added to this key later, but that’s all we get for now.

If you don’t have the Copilot key on your keyboard, you can just launch the chatbot by pressing Windows key + C on your keyboard. That’s pretty much all there is to it. However, if you do want to create a dedicated Copilot key, you can follow our guide on remapping a key for Copilot.

1 Live Captions

Your PC already has this feature

Source: Microsoft

Live Captions is an accessibility feature that’s getting an upgrade with Copilot+, but you can already use it in its basic form on any Windows 11 PC. If you have a hearing impairment, Live Captions can transcribe every piece of dialog played by your computer so that you can read the text while listening to the audio. It does require at least Windows 11 version 22H2, but you should already be on it by now.

By default, Live Captions supports 10 languages, but Copilot+ PCs will be able to support 44. Previously, the feature could not translate audio from one language to another, it could only add captions in the language being spoken. Copilot+ now adds the translation capability.

At launch, this might be the only feature that doesn’t have a proper alternative or workaround. Of course, you can always use Google Translate, or Live Captions and Live Translate in Chrome. Zoom also now offers translated captions, so you can use that service for video calls. However, the native Live Captions feature is more comprehensive, and it appears to work system-wide.

Don’t buy a laptop for the wrong reason

There are plenty of reasons to buy one of the new Snapdragon X laptops: incredible battery life, powerful performance, and sleek designs. However, Copilot+ should not be a reason why you’re buying these laptops. New AI features are everywhere these days, and in some cases, they become quite redundant very quickly. Make your computer purchase based on hardware, not due to AI-related features alone.