Microsoft is working on a new Windows feature, “Quick Machine Recovery,” that will allow IT administrators to use Windows Update with “targeted fixes” to remotely fix systems that can’t boot, according to Bleeping Computer.
The new feature is part of the Windows Resiliency Initiative — Microsoft’s efforts to prevent a repeat of the outage that occurred in July 2024, when a buggy Crowdstrike update left hundreds of thousands of Windows computers unable to start, affecting hospitals, emergency services and airlines worldwide.
Microsoft plans to roll out the Quick Machine Recovery feature to the Windows 11 Insider Program in early 2025.
As regulation threatens to tear Google apart and fundamentally both damage both Android and Apple, yet another regulatory noose is tightening around Cupertino, as its Apple Pay service will in future be regulated like a bank.
All this comes as company lawyers attempt to get the insanely flawed US Department of Justice anti-trust case against Apple quashed. and it climbs in on top of recent threats of further fines and challenges in Europe. You’d be forgiven if some of the leaders at Apple might feel a little as if they have been born in “interestingtimes.”
Apple Pay faces tougher regulation
The latest twist of the rope comes from the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which is about to introduce a new rule that puts Apple Pay and other digital wallet services under the same federal supervision as banks. That’s going to mean the CFPB can proactively examine Apple and other large companies in this space to ensure they are complying with consumer protection laws concerning privacy and surveillance, error and fraud, and maintaining service continuity in order to protect users against “debanking.”
The agency in 2022 warned some Big Tech firms providing such services about their obligations under consumer protection laws when using behavioral targeting for financial products.
Announcing the regulation on X, CFPB Director Rohit Chopra explained his organization is also concerned about “how these apps can fuel surge pricing that jack up costs using your purchase history and personal data.”
You can read the new rules governing these companies here (PDF). But what is interesting is that elements of them that might have impacted crypto transactions appear to have been mitigated or removed.
Proactive, not reactive, oversight
Most of these matters were already regulated; what really changes is how rules around them are enforced. You see, while the previous regulation meant CFPB could only react to consumer complaints as they arose, it can now proactively investigate compliance. That’s the same kind of oversight banks and credit unions already face and means Apple and other payment providers covered by the rules will face deeper and, presumably, more intrusive oversight.
The new rules will only affect digital wallet providers whose tech is handling 50 million or more transactions per year. Apple’s system is now easily the most widely used digital wallet in America, so it will most certainly face this oversight. The company also participated in the consultation process that preceded the new rule’s introduction. Other providers likely swooped up under the law will include Cash App, PayPal, Venmo, and Google Pay.
To some degree, the rules make sense, given that digital wallets are used to handle real money and consumer protection is vital. But what’s really interesting is the extent to which the new determination proves just how rapidly digital wallets have replaced real wallets across the last decade.
The rise and rise of digital payments
That’s certainly what the CFPB thinks. “Digital payments have gone from novelty to necessity and our oversight must reflect this reality,” said Chopra. “The rule will help to protect consumer privacy, guard against fraud, and prevent illegal account closures.”
If you think back, it wasn’t terribly long ago when the notion that Apple wanted to turn your iPhone into a wallet seemed impossibly extreme. That is no longer the case. Two years ago, researchers claimed Apple Pay had surpassed Mastercard in the dollar value of transactions made annually, making Apple Pay the world’s second most popular payment system, just behind Visa. Google’s G Play system then stood in fifth place.
The regulator explains that payment apps are now a “cornerstone” of daily commerce, with people using them daily as if they were cash. “What began as a convenient alternative to cash has evolved into a critical financial tool, processing over a trillion dollars in payments between consumers and their friends, families, and businesses,” the CFPB said.
What next?
I think it’s pretty clear that Apple has learned a lot about this business since the introduction of Apple Pay. Not only has it been in, and then exited, the lucrative Buy Now Pay Later market with Apple Pay Later, but it has also experienced the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with its wildly popular credit card operation, Apple Card, which has ended in a tumultuous relationship with Goldman Sachs.
During all these adventures, the company will have learned a great deal about the sector — and now that it is being regulated as if it were a bank, I wouldn’t be terribly surprised if it decided to become one.
After all, if it’s getting regulated to the same extent as banks, why not get into more of the same business sectors banks now serve? I can’t help but imagine that Apple already has a weighty file of research documents in one of its Cupertino filing cabinets exploring how and where it might profitably extend Apple Pay into more traditional banking sectors.
The new CFPB oversight regime might well accelerate any such plans.
AI agents will soon be everywhere, automating complex business processes and taking care of mundane tasks for workers — at least that’s the claim of various software vendors that are quickly adding intelligent bots to a wide range of work apps.
Many companies appear to be listening. Over the next three years, at least 40% of Global 2000 businesses will use AI agents and agentic workflows to automate knowledge work, according to an IDC report, doubling productivity in the process — where the technology is successfully implemented, at least.
Should the technology live up to expectations, businesses will be faced with a significant shift in how work is done in their organization.
“People are not just being asked to adopt a new technology, they’re being asked to change the way they do their jobs,” said Amy Loomis, research vice president, Future of Work at IDC, “I think that the vendors don’t quite appreciate how much AI is altering who does what and how.”
What are AI agents?
At a basic level, AI agents can be viewed as the next stage in the evolution of the AI tools that are already embedded in many workplace software applications — the assistants or copilots that generate content or retrieve information as directed by a worker, such as summarizing documents and drafting emails, for instance.
Autonomous AI agents, on the other hand, can complete complex, multi-step tasks with little or no input from human workers, combining large language models (LLMs) with workflow automation triggers and actions. The goal is to create intelligent and highly capable assistants that can plan, reason, and execute work tasks independently, or with minimal human oversight.
AI assistants, advisors, and agents have different capabilities and use cases, according to IDC.
IDC
“For so long we’ve talked about the work about the work — the busy work, the stuff that gets in the way of you actually doing work,” said Chris Marsh, research director, Workforce Productivity & Collaboration at S&P Global Market Intelligence. “And I think there is a genuine opportunity now to really expedite high-value work by having agents automate all that crud.”
Defining exactly what an agent is can be tricky, however: LLM-based agents are an emerging technology, and there’s a level of variance in the sophistication of tools labelled as “agents,” as well as how related terms are applied by vendors and media.
And as with the first wave of generative AI (genAI) tools, there are question marks around how businesses will use the technology. IDC analysts pointed to business scepticism around AI agent performance, alongside privacy concerns, a lack of clarity around pricing, and a skills gap in terms of understanding how knowledge work is performed “outside of traditional-documented business processes.”
Nevertheless, Deloitte predicts that a quarter of companies that use gen AI will launch “agentic AI” pilots or proofs on concept in 2025, growing to half by 2027. “Some agentic AI applications, in some industries, and for some use cases, could see actual adoption into existing workflows in 2025, especially by the back half of the year,” said Deloitte staff in a report published this week.
Achieving the “substantial gains” promised by agentic AI will require “significant overhead in terms of teams and companies adjusting to what this world looks like,” said Marsh. “And there are bigger questions … do you have the right data architecture? Do you have the right integration strategy to actually make the next phase of agentic AI a reality?”
The agents are coming
The range of options for building and managing AI agents has quickly grown in the past year.
Numerous dedicated frameworks and development platforms for building AI agents —from both startups and established technology companies — are already available. Robotic process automation software vendors have touted agents as the next generation of intelligent automation tools.
More recently, enterprise software vendors have added no-code platforms into their apps, too.
Salesforce’s Agentforce was the centerpiece of its recent Dreamforce event with the launch of its Agent Builder, a low-code tool for building AI agents, while Microsoft made its “autonomous agent” builder within Copilot Studio available in a public preview this week.
This is likely just the start: Gartner predicts that a third of enterprise applications will include “agentic AI” by 2028, up from less than 1% in 2024, with 15% of day-to-day work decisions made autonomously as a result.
Agents are also coming to digital work apps that a wide variety of office workers interact with on a regular basis. Asana, Atlassian, Box, and Slack have been among the first to announce such features in recent months. “In some ways, it’s going to be just baked into the productivity apps that you’re using, like [Microsoft 365] Copilot,” said IDC’s Loomis.
An employee onboarding agent created in Microsoft Copilot Studio.
Microsoft
Then there are agents in development from the likes of Anthropic and OpenAI: these promise to actually take over a user’s computer and perform tasks on their behalf across multiple apps.
With so many tools in development or coming to the market, there’s a certain amount of confusion among businesses that are struggling to keep pace.
“The vendors are announcing all of these different agents, and you can imagine what it’s like for the buyers: instead of ‘The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming,’ it’s ‘the agents are coming, the agents are coming,’” said Loomis. “They’re being bombarded by all of these new offerings, all of this new terminology, and all of these promises of productivity.”
Software vendors also offer varying interpretations of the term “agent” at this stage, and tools coming to market exhibit a broad spectrum of complexity and autonomy.
At a launch event last month, Microsoft gave an example of a client onboarding agent built by consultancy McKinsey. The agentic workflow kicks into action when a customer email arrives — from here the agent extracts the relevant details from emails and follows a series of steps: checking for previous interactions, summarizing client needs, and identifying the correct McKinsey employee to meet with the client. Then it can write and send an email to the employee with the relevant client details.
McKinsey claimed that the agent was able to reduce its lead time by 90% and admin work by 30%.
Microsoft has also developed other agents with more limited capability. For example, a pre-built Employee Self-Service agent available in Microsoft 365 Copilot can take some actions on behalf of a user — such as updating HR profiles — but functions mostly as an AI assistant that provides responses to user queries based on its access to documents and data from apps such as Workday and ServiceNow.
Similarly, SharePoint agents basically function as customized AI assistants that help workers retrieve information from select files. And although Microsoft says that its Facilitator note-taking agent in Teams — one of several agents announced for Microsoft 365 apps at the company’s Ignite conference this week — will eventually manage meetings “end-to-end,” the initial incarnation doesn’t sound like a huge departure from what the Copilot AI assistant can already do in the collaboration app.
These may all be useful features, of course, but are examples of the different ways agents are being marketed.
Another workplace transformation looms
Many of the agent builder tools coming to business and work apps require little or no expertise. This accessibility means a wide range of workers could manage and coordinate their own agents.
Some software vendors claim that all knowledge workers will build agents to help them in their job.
“We think everyone will need to be able to create agents in the future, much like how everyone can create spreadsheets or presentations in Microsoft 365,” said Bryan Goode, corporate vice president for Business Applications at Microsoft, in an email comment to Computerworld last month. Alongside its Copilot Studio app, Microsoft has added a “lightweight” agent builder to its Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant, which aims to encourage a wide range of workers to create agents using natural language prompts from the AI assistant’s BizChat interface.
A recent IDC report predicts a “transformative shift in how knowledge workers approach their daily and project-oriented tasks and workflows” in the coming years, thanks to the introduction of AI agents that will perform tasks “both autonomously and interactively.”
“As frustration with inefficient processes and lack of technological support mounts, workers will quickly realize they can harness the new capabilities of LLMs to automate and augment portions of their jobs,” the authors wrote.
The IDC analysts forecast that a fifth of knowledge workers with no development experience will build their own agentic workflows by the end of next year. “Despite lacking formal development experience, [knowledge workers] will harness the power of LLMs conversationally to create personalized, agentic workflows,” analysts said in the report. This means describing “tasks, processes, problems, and goals” in plain language that language models turn into the code, scripts, or automation routines required to run personal AI agents.
Although he sees potential for all manner of workers to create agents for individual productivity, S&P’s Marsh said that, for the most part, it’s likely to be a smaller subset of workers that build agents to automate key business processes. “So if it’s a bunch of workflow automation in a sales team, it’s probably going to be the sales ops person who does that, or the marketing ops person in a marketing function,” he said.
AI agents will handle a range of business processes, from relatively simple to complex.
Microsoft
The introduction of agents will require businesses and workers to adapt to yet another substantial change to how knowledge work is carried out. The shift to a hybrid-remote model is barely complete for a lot of organizations, and the initial wave of generative AI assistants are only in the early stages of adoption at most businesses. Injecting AI agents into business processes will further disrupt how work is done.
“In the longer term … I actually believe that we will start to change workflows in businesses, from human-led to AI-led,” said Matthew Kropp, managing director and senior partner at Boston Consulting Group.
The deployment of new automation technologies inevitably raises the prospect of job losses too. But despite the potential for agents to automate work processes, IDC’s Loomis expects that the technology will reshape rather than replace jobs.
“It doesn’t mean your job’s going away,” she said. “It means you focus on different things, and your job is to manage or develop the automation. So people are going to have to get much more technically astute, to a certain degree.”
Craig Le Clair, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, predicts that the net number of jobs will remain the same or grow, but increasingly advanced automation will eventually result in a significant shift in the types of roles that are needed.
“Agents will mostly affect the digital elite, which is the professional category, and the ‘middle workers’ for those lower-level cognitive tasks that they do in the mid-office, in the back office. Those are going to create the greatest shifts,” said Le Clair, author of the book Random Acts of Automation.
Use cases in industries with high interest in AI agents, according to Forrester Research.
Forrester Research, Inc.
“AI is going to not so much eliminate jobs — I think we figured out that we can’t really predict that anyway — it’s more having middle workers either move to front line, or in a positive way, have middle workers who become AI operators be able to move up … the ‘digital elite’ will be challenged with the diminished importance of their professional credentials,” he said.
Are AI agents ready to deploy?
While automation holds great potential to transform how work is carried out in future, the near-term reality for businesses is a different story.
The first generation of generative AI assistants and copilots have now descended into what Gartner terms the “trough of disillusionment,” with many projects remaining at a pilot stage due to a combination of factors: change management, a lack of clarity on ROI, and various security considerations, for example. And then there’s the propensity for language models to “hallucinate” answers. Many of the same challenges will be faced when deploying AI agents.
Businesses are understandably cautious about letting LLM-based agents act autonomously and access business systems, for example, even if they are subject to limitations in terms of the actions they are programmed to carry.
For the time being, most businesses will want some sort of human oversight. “There are no circumstances, at least right now, in which you would deploy this without some ‘human in the loop,’” said Kropp. This means that human workers have visibility into the agent’s actions and are consulted before taking riskier actions. That said, Kropp is confident that the problem of AI hallucinations will fade in significance as the technology matures, with agent reasoning capabilities also improving quickly.
While there are likely to be plenty of challenges along the way, Marsh expects that the combination of AI and automation will ultimately have a “profound” impact on how works gets done — even more so than other recent workplace shifts prompted by new technologies.
“I think the productivity gains are there. I think they’re real … If I think of all those changes that have happened over the past five years, this will be easily the biggest,” he said.
DuckDuckGo has urged the European Commission to open three investigations into Google’s compliance with the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), alleging non-compliance with key obligations under the law.
In a blog post, the privacy-focused search engine outlined Google’s obligations under the DMA, which include sharing anonymized click and query data, implementing choice screens, and allowing users to easily change default search settings.
“Unfortunately, Google is using a malicious compliance playbook to undercut the DMA,” DuckDuckGo said. “Google has selectively adhered to certain obligations – often due to pressure from the Commission – while totally disregarding others or making farcical compliance proposals that could never have the desired impact.”
DuckDuckGo argued that the obligations were designed to counter Google’s market dominance, noting parallels with findings in the United States v. Google case. The US judge in that case ruled that Google’s scale and distribution advantages were illegal, citing that 70% of search queries flow through access points preloaded with Google.
This creates what the judge called a “perpetual scale and quality deficit” for competitors, locking in Google’s dominance.
DuckDuckGo’s call for additional probes comes as Google faces growing competition from emerging players such as OpenAI and Perplexity AI.
Compliance enforcement challenges
DuckDuckGo’s allegations against Google shed light on the ongoing challenges in enforcing fair competition within the digital ecosystem.
In its post, DuckDuckGo has even argued that DMA fails to adequately address Google’s scale advantage. While sharing click-and-query data is a crucial step, the company said it is not enough on its own to foster a competitive search engine market.
“The potential gaps in Google’s compliance with the DMA underscore the need for vigilant regulatory oversight,” said Prabhu Ram, VP of the industry research group at Cybermedia Research. “If substantiated, these allegations could significantly impact competition dynamics in Europe.”
Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst and CEO at Greyhound Research, added that it’s important to note that DMA is wide-ranging, complex, and open to interpretation.
“Hence, whether or not Google is compliant is still up for discussion,” Gogia said. “The fact is that Google has made select changes to encourage fair competition. Still, given the open-to-interpretation nature of this act, there is room for discussion (read allegation) from the competition.”
Moreover, as new competitors like Perplexity AI and OpenAI gain traction in the search market, any regulatory action against Google must account for the growing challenge these vendors pose to its dominance, Gogia added.
What Google may do
This could get more difficult as analysts suggest Google may have strategies to navigate the issue, such as licensing anonymized search data that excludes a significant portion of queries.
While this approach could technically comply with legal requirements, it risks undermining the intent of the rules.
“This, in turn, raises concerns about genuine user choice in an environment favoring incumbents,” Ram pointed out. “How EU regulators address these issues will be pivotal, shaping the behavior of other gatekeepers and setting important precedents for global competition policies.”
In its post, DuckDuckGo has called on regulators worldwide to examine the implementation of DMA, warning that Google has exploited loopholes to circumvent the rules. The company urged authorities to take measures to ensure Google cannot continue to obstruct progress and fair competition.
According to Techcrunch, users need a subscription to Microsoft 365 to have access to the technology.
Initially, the tool will support nine languages: English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, German, Japanese, Korean and Mandarin. More languages are likely to be added over time.
Among the first things Apple IT admins woke up to this morning was news of a pair of actively exploited zero-day attacks in the wild targeting Intel Macs, iPhones, iPads, and even Vision Pro users. Apple has already released software patches for the flaws, which is why the second thing admins realized is that they must rush through any necessary software verification process required before expediting installation of the update.
In these days of remotely managed devices and increasingly effective MDM systems, that’s far less a problem than it was in the past. You can usually make a policy change and push out updates to all your managed devices quickly.
Companies that don’t use these systems, or those that have employees using their own personal devices to access potentially sensitive internal data, must work harder to convince users to install security updates. So, what can they tell people about the latest threat that might help motivate them to install the patch today?
Why you should update immediately
First, Apple says it believes the attack is being actively used, which means any Intel system — including systems used by other people you interact with — is a potential target. “Apple is aware of a report that this issue may have been exploited,” the company said.
Second, it slips in using flaws in software you use daily, including JavaScript and WebKit, the rendering engine that powers the Safari browser on Apple devices. In other words, everyone using Apple’s devices is a potential target.
Finally — and perhaps best of all — Apple has already shipped a fix for the problem, maintaining its reputation for being ahead of threats, rather than echoing the approach taken by some other platforms and racing to keep up with attacks. It’s almost as if Apple’s systems remain more secure for a reason. The company addressed 20 zero-day attacks in 2023 and has guarded against just six so far this year.
Michael Covington, vice president for portfolio strategy at Jamf, thinks all users should update at once.
“While Apple has warned that the vulnerabilities, also present in macOS, may be actively exploited on Intel-based systems, we recommend updating any device that is at risk,” he said. “With attackers potentially exploiting both vulnerabilities, it is critical that users and mobile-first organizations apply the latest patches as soon as they are able.”
What are these attacks?
The attack vector makes use of two vulnerabilities found in macOS Sequoia JavaScriptCore (CVE-2024-44308) and WebKit (CVE-2024-44309). The first lets attackers achieve remote code execution (RCE) through maliciously crafted web content; the second lets attackers engage in cross-site scripting attacks.
As admins will recognize, RCE exploits can enable attackers to install malware surreptitiously on infected machines, perform denial-of-service attacks, or access sensitive information, while a cross-scripting attack can help hackers grab personal data for identity theft and other nefarious ends. No one wants to be a victim of either form of attack.
Who is using these attacks?
No information pertaining to who has been using these flaws in their attacks has been shared. With that in mind, it’s important to note that the flaws were identified by researchers at Google’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG), which works to counter government-backed attacks. That suggests that whoever has been weaponizing these vulnerabilities is connected to a national entity of some kind.
If that is the case, recent reports from TAG suggest an upsurge in such attacks, so users in some industries and professions might want to consider locking down their devices with Apple’s Lockdown Mode to minimize their attack surface. IT, meanwhile, should review security compliance, particularly among those using older iPhones, iPads, or Intel Macs.
Microsoft at this week’s Ignite conference unveiled new Copilot Studio features aimed at both expanding the functionality of AI agents created with the application and improving the accuracy of outputs.
Among the latest updates to Copilot Studio is the ability to connect agents to third-party applications such as Salesforce, ServiceNow, and Zendesk. The goal is to provide access to “real-time knowledge” that helps answer complex questions, Microsoft said. That feature is now in preview.
In addition, Copilot Studio now integrates with the new Azure AI Foundry to enable access to a wider range of data within an organization, Omar Aftab, vice president of conversational AI at Microsoft, said in a blog post. “By connecting all their data sources, organizations can see that agents are more grounded in their business data and provide specific, high-quality responses,” he said.
There are also new “multimodal” AI enhancements to Copilot Studio agents. Users can embed an agent built in Copilot Studio into an interactive voice system (used in automated voice calls for customer service, for example) to create “speech enabled agents,” said Aftab. These can also be embedded in various “applications, standalone kiosks, concierge systems, and more,” he said. And Copilot Studio agents can now analyze images, allowing users to upload files and ask questions about them.
Microsoft has also opened access — in a public preview — to autonomous agent builder tools in Copilot Studio, as announced last month. “Makers can now build agents that work on their behalf, without having to prompt the agent, saving human hours and increasing efficiency,” said Aftab. “They can create these agents from scratch or configure agents that are prebuilt in Copilot Studio.”
There’s an agent library to help users get started, too, (also in public preview), with pre-built agents tailored to common work processes such as leave management, sales orders and deal acceleration, Microsoft said.
Among the other announcements Tuesday is the ability to build customized agents with a “streamlined Copilot Studio experience” that’s now embedded in the BizChat interface of Microsoft 365 Copilot. These agents are created using natural language directions, and can be given access to enterprise data held in apps such as Dynamics 365 and SharePoint. There are also pre-built agents, including an Employee Self-Service agent.
Copilot Studio can address some of the shortcomings of a “horizontal” tool such as Microsoft 365 Copilot, which often requires a lot of guidance to access the right data, and may produce hallucinations, said J.P. Gownder, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.
“The Copilot Studio tools help to fill this gap by allowing organizations to create more finely tuned solutions that nevertheless are a lot easier and cheaper than training a model from scratch,” he said.
Improved tuning and sourcing in Copilot Studio allows more retrieval augmented generation (RAG)-based approaches, said Gownder, which specifies data more precisely, reducing the likelihood of “both vague outputs and hallucinations.” The ability to use custom Azure AI Search indexes as a knowledge source for custom RAG scenarios — another of the Copilot Studio updates at Ignite — allows for more “specific, contextual, and accurate outcomes,” he said.
“Being able to then take these Copilot Studio agents and plug them into Microsoft 365 Copilot could democratize some of these innovations, allowing employees to tap into them right in their flow of work,” said Gownder. “This heightened context, accuracy, and specificity could solve some of the problems that enterprise leaders have cited as downsides to M365 Copilot.
“Microsoft has rolled out a lot of Copilot solutions with sunny story lines that enterprises aren’t always able to replicate in their own environments,” said Gownder. “So, while the Copilot Studio announcements sound promising, we must wait and see if they truly work as advertised to create value.”
A US congressional commission has called for a “Manhattan Project-like” initiative to accelerate artificial intelligence (AI) development, urging Congress to grant the executive branch sweeping, multiyear contracting authority to fund advancements in AI, cloud computing, and data centers.
The bipartisan US-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) issued the recommendations in a 793-page report on Tuesday, highlighting the growing urgency to outpace China’s rapid strides in emerging technologies, including AI, quantum computing, and biotechnology.
“Congress should establish and fund a Manhattan Project-like program dedicated to racing and acquiring an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) capability,” the report stated, drawing parallels to the WWII-era government project that developed the first atomic bombs.
“Provide broad multiyear contracting authority to the executive branch and associated funding for leading artificial intelligence, cloud, and data center companies and others to advance the stated policy at a pace and scale consistent with the goal of US AGI leadership,” the report further added as a suggestion to Congress.
The report also advised the Secretary of Defense to designate AI projects as having the highest national priority, underscoring the strategic importance of staying technologically ahead of China to protect US economic and military interests.
“Direct the US secretary of defense to provide a Defense Priorities and Allocations System “DX Rating” to items in the artificial intelligence ecosystem to ensure this project receives national priority,” it stated.
A “DX Rating” is assigned to programs of highest national priority.
The USCC, established in 2000 to monitor and report on US-China trade and economic relations, issued its latest report amid mounting geopolitical tensions and a race to dominate the technologies of the future.
Tech rivalry with global implications
The commission warned that China’s technological progress, if left unchecked could threaten US deterrence in the Pacific region and destabilize the global balance of power. “China’s advancements could erode the United States’ economic and military position and tip the global balance of power,” the report said.
The US has already taken steps to limit China’s access to critical technologies. On Monday, the Treasury Department finalized a rule restricting US investments in Chinese AI, quantum computing, and semiconductor sectors — a move building on President Joe Biden’s executive order last year aimed at curbing the export of technologies that could bolster China’s military and intelligence capabilities.
Tuesday’s report also detailed tensions between the two nations over issues such as sanctions on Chinese officials, restrictions on semiconductor imports, and national security concerns surrounding the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok.
“Despite a bilateral agreement reached in late 2023 to pursue limited cooperation on military communication, climate change, countering fentanyl and other drugs, artificial intelligence (AI), and people-to-people ties, China has continued its efforts to counter or weaken US policies without changing its own behavior,” the report observed.
Generative AI is central to the recommendations of the report, which pointed out that while the US currently leads development in the domain by over a year, “Chinese companies are making a concerted effort to develop generative AI models similar in sophistication to those of US companies.”
The USCC report also emphasized the US’ need to maintain leadership in developing Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) — AI systems capable of performing any intellectual task that a human can do.
The proposed initiative echoes the strategic and national security urgency of the original Manhattan Project, highlighting the role of advanced technology in shaping global power dynamics.
Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant appears to be transforming into a chatty AI sidekick, and I’ve seen quite a few Copilot users who aren’t happy about it. Thankfully, there’s now another option for anyone interested in using AI purely for productivity — a full-featured ChatGPT app for Windows PCs.
Even at launch, ChatGPT’s Windows app is already a better productivity tool than Copilot. It’s quite a setback for Microsoft’s AI assistant — which, when it first launched as Bing Chat, had a more powerful AI model than ChatGPT and offered features that went beyond what ChatGPT offered, such as the ability to search the web.
Things have certainly changed.
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Meet ChatGPT’s new Windows app
OpenAI technically launched its ChatGPT app for Windows in October. But at the time, the ChatGPT Windows app was only for paying ChatGPT subscribers. Now, it’s free for anyone to use — including free ChatGPT users.
That means you can now get ChatGPT’s Windows app from the Microsoft Store, whether you’re paying for the premium version of the service or not. The app runs on both Windows 11 and Windows 10 PCs. Once you launch it, you’ll have to sign in with an account. (The web-based version of ChatGPT doesn’t require an account, but the desktop app does.)
The official ChatGPT app offers more options than Copilot.
Under the hood, both Copilot and ChatGPT use much of the same technology. While Google’s Gemini assistant uses Google’s own AI models, Microsoft’s Copilot uses OpenAI’s ChatGPT models — along with something Microsoft calls the “Microsoft Prometheus model.”
Comparing the two, you’ll first notice how similar the interface is. But ChatGPT feels more like a more focused productivity tool, whereas Copilot feels like it’s trying to be more friendly and approachable. Copilot has pastel colors, lots of graphics, and greets you by name with requests about how your day is going.
Microsoft Copilot is starting to feel more like an “AI friend” than an AI assistant.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
For example: Both ChatGPT and Copilot offer voice chat. When I click the voice chat button in ChatGPT, I hear silence — the AI model won’t respond until I speak to it. When I click the voice chat button in Copilot, I hear a friendly “Hey Chris! How’s your day going?”
It really makes me wonder: Were few people using Copilot in Windows? Did Microsoft have to redesign it to make it more approachable?
ChatGPT provides a selection of voice options, just like Copilot does.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
ChatGPT’s app also beats Copilot when it comes to working with files:
Copilot lets you drag and drop image files to upload them — but that’s it.
ChatGPT lets you drag and drop PDF files, Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and more to the ChatGPT app to upload them and ask questions about them.
It’s just a much more powerful interface. ChatGPT offers more flexibility with its built-in hotkeys, too:
To launch Copilot, you’ll need a new-ish laptop that comes with a Copilot key on its keyboard. (Microsoft used to let the Windows+C hotkey launch Copilot, but that’s been removed.)
To launch ChatGPT, you can press Alt+Space — or you can change this shortcut to anything you’d prefer in the ChatGPT app’s settings. (If you have Microsoft PowerToys installed, the Alt+Space shortcut may launch the PowerToys Run launcher instead. You’ll need to change the hotkey for either tool.)
ChatGPT launches a convenient small window when you press the shortcut.
Chris Hoffman, IDG
ChatGPT also offers more flexibility when it comes to working with saved conversations:
Copilot will let you start a new conversation, if you like — but that’s it.
ChatGPT lets you start new chats, and it also lets you switch to recent chats you’ve used right from its sidebar.
Some features are similar. Both Copilot and ChatGPT can search the web for you to find up-to-date information. Neither can search the web while you’ve having a voice conversation, however — hopefully that’ll arrive in the future.
Both ChatGPT and Copilot offer different answers, too. You should experiment with both to see which best fits your needs. However, in my testing, I found that ChatGPT was more verbose in its responses — in a good way. Since the update where Copilot started trying to be your best friend, Copilot has been giving shorter responses with a focus on follow-up questions for you, to keep the conversation going.
Copilot Pro still beats ChatGPT for Office integration
For all of ChatGPT’s advantages, Copilot does still have one trick up its sleeve: If you pay for a $20 per month Copilot Pro subscription, you get access to Copilot AI integration in Microsoft Office apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook.
If this is a feature you like, Copilot is unbeaten. ChatGPT can’t get its hooks into Office apps directly. And it’s a good argument for paying Microsoft’s $20-per-month Copilot Pro subscription rather than OpenAI’s $20-per-month ChatGPT Plus subscription if you’re going to be spending money on a premium AI chatbot subscription.
But for people who aren’t spending any money, ChatGPT is a better productivity tool.
I haven’t found it worthwhile to spend $20 a month to use Copilot in Office apps, although I use Microsoft Word and Excel all the time. But everyone has different workflows, and some professionals are finding it to be useful.
ChatGPT is more of a productivity tool than Copilot
I haven’t covered every option in the ChatGPT app here. In general, ChatGPT has more options and feels like more of a productivity tool, while Copilot feels more like it’s trying to be the new ELIZA. (ELIZA was a chatbot from the 1960s. It was a mock therapist that asks questions like “How does that make you feel?”)
ChatGPT also offers more for free, for anyone whose company isn’t already footing a premium subscription. For example: ChatGPT lets you upload Office documents to analyze them; on Microsoft’s side, that feature requires the $20 per month Copilot Pro subscription to do the same thing in Word or other Microsoft 365 apps.
And, again, Copilot refuses to let you launch it with a hotkey — unless you buy a new PC that comes with a Copilot key; ChatGPT lets you choose your own key.
ChatGPT pulls ahead — for now
Is the race over? Of course not. Remember, when Microsoft launched Bing Chat, it surpassed ChatGPT. Bing Chat originally had more advanced AI models that only came to ChatGPT later. Microsoft could improve the ChatGPT app and integrate it better with Windows — currently, it’s really just a web app. And Microsoft could create its own AI models and use them with Copilot.
But, for now, ChatGPT is in the lead here. Windows users who rely on ChatGPT — or Windows users who just want a more powerful AI chatbot app than what Microsoft is delivering with Copilot — should install the app and give it a look.
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