Nobody Wanted an ‘A.I. PC,’ So Microsoft Dropped the Copilot+ Name

Microsoft and Qualcomm have started backing away from “Copilot+ PC,” the name they used in 2024 to sell a new class of Windows laptops. The devices are still there, and the AI features are still there. The label is what’s fading out.

That shift shows up first on the newest Surface models. Microsoft’s Surface chief Brett Ostrum said, bluntly, “These are not called Copilot+ PCs,” even though the machines still meet the company’s old standard. Qualcomm is sounding just as relaxed about the retreat. Kedar Kondap said customers can get “the same experiences, probably without just using that terminology,” which is a very polite way of saying the branding did not stick.

The original point of the name was to signal a minimum level of performance for AI chips with N.P.U.s. But the market seems to have bought the hardware for more ordinary reasons. TechSpot says the early devices sold well because people needed new laptops anyway, not because they were chasing AI. That’s the part the industry keeps running into: useful features don’t automatically make a useful sales pitch.

Microsoft also gave the brand a few bad breaks of its own. Recall, the feature that saves screen screenshots so people can search back through what they’ve done, drew heavy criticism from security researchers and arrived only after a long delay. The name itself didn’t help either, since the laptops had little to do with the Copilot chatbot and Copilot’s reputation was already shaky online.

And the retreat is broader than Microsoft. Dell brought back its XPS name earlier this year. Nvidia skipped the Copilot+ label for its RTX Spark laptop platform. Apple never bothered with the phrase at all. So the AI features stay in the products, but the marketing is drifting back toward the old reliables: price, battery life and design.