Nathaniel Whittemore

He added, In our minds, voice will now become the third input mechanism to use with your PC.

It doesn't replace the keyboard and mouse necessarily, but it's an added thing and it will be pretty profound and a new way to do it.

They also have a new feature coming called Copilot Actions, which is sort of similar to OpenAI's Operator or Google's new Gemini Enterprise.

The feature spins up a new window where the users can give directions and watch the agent complete tasks using local files.

They can either monitor the agent and take over at any time or click away to a different window and let the agent run in the background.

Now, as I've said before, despite what seem like some stumbles and missteps, Microsoft has an incredible distribution network and serious benefits when it comes to consumer installs.

And this is a great example of how owning the entire end-to-end experience could be a game changer when it comes to how much value you can unlock for a particular user.

Moving over to IP land, Spotify has reached a deal with the major music labels on how AI will intersect with the music industry.

Spotify will collaborate with Sony, Universal, Warner, Merlin, and Believe to, quote, develop responsible AI products that empower the artists and songwriters they represent and connect them with the fans who support them.

In a press release, Spotify wrote, Some voices in the tech industry believe copyright should be abolished.

We don't.

Musicians' rights matter.

Copyright is essential.

If the music industry doesn't lead in this moment, AI-powered innovation will happen elsewhere without rights, consent, or compensation.

Now, the announcement didn't discuss any specific products, but it did reinforce that the introduction of AI features would fundamentally be the choice of rights holders and artists.

They're also aiming to build AI products that create wholly new revenue streams and want to ensure that rights holders are properly compensated and credited appropriately.

A lot of the coverage was extremely skeptical.

Spotify has recently been criticized for allowing low-effort AI tracks to proliferate, leading to a purge of 75 million AI-generated tracks in September.

But others are willing to give the benefit of the doubt.

Ed Newton Rex, the CEO of copyright advocacy group Fairly Trained, posted,