- Another Microsoft executive has detailed their vision of a future Windows
- Pavan Davuluri, VP of Windows and Devices, echoes the thoughts previously laid out by Microsoft’s VP for OS Security, David Weston
- The overall vision is for more AI, and an OS that watches what you’re doing on-screen, tapping into the cloud, which may worry the privacy conscious
Another Microsoft executive has provided their vision of the future of Windows, specifically framed around AI and the cloud, and how this – and voice input – is going to be a big part of the operating system down the line.
Windows Central discovered a YouTube interview with Pavan Davuluri, VP of Windows and Devices at Microsoft. See the video clip below, and be warned, the technobabble is strong with this one. Davuluri says at one point: “Computing [will] become more ambient, more pervasive, continue to span form factors, and certainly become more multi-modal in the arc of time.”
Okay, so let’s boil this – and the rest of the interview – down a bit. Computing becoming more “multi-modal” refers to using inputs beyond the traditional mouse and keyboard, and the exec touches on voice commands as an important part of the equation. This echoes what Microsoft’s VP for OS Security, David Weston, said earlier this month when explaining his vision of Windows in 2030.
Davuluri also says, “Fundamentally, the concept that your computer can actually look at your screen and is context aware is going to become an important modality for us going forward.”
Again, that follows up on what Weston observed about the next-gen Windows PC being able “to see what we see, hear what we hear, and we can talk to it and ask it to do much more sophisticated things.”
The key idea appears to be Windows watching what you’re doing, using AI to determine context, and then applying that to your actions in the OS, and specifically making voice commands more useful due to that context.
Davuluri notes: “You’ll be able to speak to your computer while you’re writing, inking, or interacting with another person. You should be able to have a computer semantically understand your intent to interact with it.”
The exec also talks about Windows becoming “increasingly agentic” (with the first AI agent recently having debuted in the Settings app in Windows 11, of course), and how the cloud will be needed to power these AI abilities. (Although some of the work will be on-device, he indicates, as we see with Copilot+ PCs already – hence the need for NPUs with these laptops.)
Davuluri observes: “Compute will become pervasive, as in Windows experiences are going to use a combination of capabilities that are local [processed on the device] and that are in the cloud. I think it’s our responsibility to make sure they’re seamless to our customers.”
Which is a roundabout way of saying that the level of processing needed for some of these AI powers in next-gen Windows will need to tap the cloud to ensure performance remains responsive enough to feel ‘seamless’ rather than sluggish.
Analysis: A computing paradise – or Big Brother nightmare?
Microsoft has clearly got a hymn sheet somewhere, as its top-level executives appear to be singing the same tune regarding how Windows will evolve as we head into the next decade.
It’s interesting to pick up on the mirrored points between these two interviews Microsoft has recently presented: more AI (surprise, surprise) that determines context by watching what you’re doing on-screen, and also allows voice commands to be more effectively used based on that context – with the cloud at least partly powering all this.
Depending on what kind of person you are, this may sound like an exciting new way forward in terms of making it easier to do what you need to do within Windows, or a privacy nightmare.
The more paranoid-leaning Windows users out there are likely to be horrified at the suggestions made about the future of the OS here. An operating system that’s watching what you do? The way they’ll read this angle from Microsoft is that it’s turning Windows into an AI-powered surveillance platform – you can guarantee that.
And it’s obvious where such concerns come from when we’re told the “computer can actually look at your screen” and take context from there, and leverage the cloud (read: Microsoft’s private servers) to crunch the data on what you’re doing with your PC.
If this makes using next-gen Windows a breeze, and AI is constantly firing up the apps you need, or searches you want to make, before you get to them, or proactively suggesting files you might want next – or Windows options that could be changed for your benefit in given scenarios – will people even care about what’s happening in the cloud? Frankly, the truth is, they probably won’t if it makes their computing lives a lot easier.