Microsoft Copilot AI will soon run locally on PCs and laptops

Microsoft has been making headlines for its AI service, the Microsoft Copilot. The Copilot bot is an AI-powered tool that can help you with completing tasks. Whether it be drafting an email, or searching for some information, or creating an AI image, it can do it all. However, as we are slowly moving to on-device AI services, Microsoft doesn’t want to stay behind. Intel has revealed that Copilot will soon run locally on PCs.

Microsoft Copilot AI may soon go on-device, but not fully

Microsoft Copilot uses the cloud to provide answers or to complete a task. However, Intel recently told Tom’s Hardware that Copilot AI will soon run locally on PCs. The company revealed that to do so, next-gen PCs will require chips with faster neural processing units (NPS). Next-gen AI PCs are said to have neural processing units (NPS) with 40 TOPs (trillion operations per second) of power. This is way higher than any available processor in the consumer market.

For starters, Apple’s M3 chipset has the fastest NPU speed coming with 18 TOPs. Next are AMD Ryzen 8040  and 7040 laptop chips that come with 16 and 10 TOPs, respectively. Intel has a Meteor Lake laptop chip that hits 10 TOPs. So, despite being some of the most powerful chips, they aren’t ready for running AI locally.

Qualcomm, however, may offer a processor that is almost capable of running Copilot via the Snapdragon X Elite chip. The chip has 45 TOPs placing itself in the top category.

While some chip makers aren’t near the number mentioned above in the article, they are working on some really powerful AI-capable chips. Intel’s Lunar Lake chips, which are expected to arrive next year, will have triple the current NPU speeds. Intel recently also unveiled its AI PC development kit based on the ASUS NUC Pro, which has Meteor Lake SoC.

So, expect next-gen PCs and laptops soon to be capable of running on-device AI tools. Microsoft Copilot, as noted, may be available locally soon. However, not all functions may run locally. Some key features of Copilot will work locally, while for others, the tool may rely on the cloud.

Microsoft has insisted chipmakers like Intel that Copilot should run on NPU instead of GPU as it will minimize the impact on battery life.