Microsoft is discontinuing Windows Mixed Reality

Microsoft Corp. is using powerful computers and artificial intelligence to help researchers speed up the painstaking work required to discover new chemical compounds and materials that could be used for everything from batteries to eco-friendly paints.

The European Union's competition regulator said Tuesday it was looking into Microsoft's investment into ChatGPT developer, the CEO Sam Altman-led OpenAI to see if it merits further investigation under the bloc's merger rules. The European Commission said in a statement it was "checking whether Microsoft's investment in OpenAI might be reviewable under the EU Merger Regulation".

A day after Apple announced the sale of its AR/VR headset, the Apple Vision Pro, in the US, Sony has previewed its own headset that competes against Apple's at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2024. Unlike other mixed reality headsets, the Sony headset is primarily not meant for consumers but for engineers and developers, much like the Apple Vision Pro. Sony plans to collaborate with developers of a variety of 3D production software, including in the entertainment and industrial design fields.

Earlier today, reports started circulating from industry insiders that Microsoft has reportedly considered bringing one of its first-party IPs, Sea of Thieves, to rival Sony and Nintendo platforms.

Microsoft has dabbled a few times over recent years with bringing some of its relatively smaller-scale first party titles to competitor platforms, and it seems like the company has more of that planned for the future. Recent rumours have claimed that a Nintendo Switch port of Hi-Fi Rush is in the works, and according to Windows Central’s Jez Corden, there’s a chance it won’t be the only Xbox exclusive to go multiplatform.

Microsoft Corp. executive Dee Templeton has joined OpenAI's board as a nonvoting observer, according to a person familiar with the matter, as part of a broader boardroom overhaul following the brief ouster of the startup's chief executive officer (CEO) Sam Altman. Templeton has worked at Microsoft for more than 25 years and is the company's vice president for technology and research partnerships and operations, according to her LinkedIn profile. She has already begun attending board meetings, according to the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private matters. OpenAI and Microsoft declined to comment. 

Get ready to infuriate yourself in a whole new way as you swap mistakenly opening the Windows Start Menu with an accidental keystroke for summoning an AI determined to paint you a picture. Microsoft have announced their plans to introduce a dedicated AI button to keyboards for Windows PCs, the first major change to their keyboards since the Windows key was added nearly 30 years ago.

Qualcomm Inc., the biggest maker of mobile phone processors, announced the Snapdragon XR2 chip designed for virtual and mixed reality headsets that will compete with Apple Inc.'s forthcoming Vision Pro.

In a significant step today, the tech major has taken the expansion of artificial intelligence-enabled tools to the next level. It has announced Microsoft Copilot key for Windows 11 PCs. Notably, this is the first major change to Microsoft Windows keyboard in almost 3 decades. Henceforth, Copilot will be the entry point into the AI space on a Windows PC. The Windows key to the PC keyboard was rolled out almost 30 years ago and it had then enabled users to interact with Windows. 

One constant of the last year's worth of news swirling aroundMicrosoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard was the back-and-forth bickering between the tech giant and the UK's Competition and Markets Authority as the deal headed to a close. Now, Microsoft's Brad Smith seems to have softened his tone a bit regarding the CMA.

After OpenAI launched its ChatGPT app on Android and iOS, Microsoft has followed suit. Just days after launching the Android app, Microsoft Copilot, the company's AI chatbot integrated with the Bing search engine, is now available for iPhones too. The app has also been optimized for iPads and is available for iPadOS. The app, unlike its web avatar, is a standalone AI chatbot that can answer questions in both text as well as image formats. The app is free to use.

Amid rising concerns and multiple legal battles of authors, publishers, and media houses over large language models (LLMs) using their copyrighted work to train AI systems, the New York Times has filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft. The publisher has alleged that the two AI firms have been using the former's copyrighted published work unauthorized to train their respective AI models. This lawsuit has now heightened the conflict between publishers and AI companies, as regulatory institutions still try to figure out the right way to control and monitor the data AI models are trained on.