TL; DR
- The company has announced a host of new features for Windows 11’s 24H2 and 25H2 versions, including redesigned widgets, the smallest taskbar icons, adaptive battery indicators, and themed lock-screen widgets.
- Microsoft has announced AI-powered Surface Copilot+ PCs with built-in 5G: the Surface Laptop (5G) and the Surface Pro 12.
- Copilot is getting a new avatar called Mico, bringing expressive, empathetic visual feedback through gestures and color changes, as well as more natural interactions.
The Redmond-based tech giant has unveiled a host of updates that embed artificial intelligence deeply into everyday computing. Central to these announcements were additions to Microsoft Copilot, the company’s AI assistant. It now features richer collaboration, personalized memory, natural language interaction, and multi-modal capabilities across Windows 11, Surface devices, and Microsoft 365 applications.
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Microsoft October 2025 Event: Key Highlights And Announcements
Windows 11
The company has announced a host of new features for Windows 11’s 24H2 and 25H2 versions, including redesigned widgets, adaptive battery indicators, and themed lock-screen widgets. Along with that, the company also announced enhanced privacy controls and semantic indexing for improving search across local files and web content.
Among the other new features released for Windows 11 are desktop hardware indicator repositioning, AI Actions for File Explorer, changes to the context menu, a redesign of the Advanced Settings page, a Notification Center with a full clock, and Windows Hello with an improved design. The Settings app also gets a new AI Agent, allowing users to find options by describing them in natural language.
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Microsoft has also enhanced its controversial Recall feature with enhanced memory indexing, improved privacy controls, semantic search upgrades, cross-device continuity, and deeper integration with Copilot.
Surface Announcements
Microsoft has announced AI-powered Surface Copilot+ PCs with built-in 5G: the Surface Laptop (5G) and the Surface Pro 12.
Both devices are powered by the next-generation Intel Core Ultra Series 2 or Snapdragon X Plus processor with integrated NPUs optimized for AI workloads. Further, these devices support Intune and Surface Management Portal for enterprise IT with removable SSDs and easier servicing.
Another key feature provides IT admins with AI-based troubleshooting, warranty management, and predictive maintenance.
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Business Applications
During the Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event, the company expanded Copilot Studio with drag-and-drop AI agent design, Dynamics 365 sales and finance with new generative-AI summaries for customer interactions, and Power BI October 2025 updates for AI Copilot integration, which offers automatic insight generation, Fabric Data Lake improvements, and new visualization templates.
While Outlook is getting multi-select calendar categories and contextual reminders, Teams is getting forwarded-message links and simplified admin control for Copilot.
Copilot Enhancements
First and foremost, Copilot is getting a new avatar called Mico, bringing expressive, empathetic visual feedback through gestures and color changes, as well as more natural interactions. Then there’s Groups, a collaborative Copilot session where up to 32 users can brainstorm and manage shared tasks in the same AI-enabled workspace.
Copilot is also getting a Real Talk Mode, an adaptive conversational style providing Socratic questioning and constructive feedback to encourage critical thinking. Along with these, the AI assistant now has a longer memory span, supports natural language querying across third-party services, and includes Proactive Actions and Copilot for Health, a feature that draws on reputable sources and helps with medical queries.
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Additional features include a Copilot Mode in Microsoft Edge, Windows Copilot integration, and Copilot Pages and Search.
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