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The original was posted on /r/microsoft by /u/AlemCalypso on 2025-08-26 21:22:23+00:00.

Not sure why MS has to make things so vague and silly, but just had a chat with a vendor and I finally get the difference between Copilot and Copilot+.

Copilot is… well… copilot. It is an online service where you send data to MS, and their servers do the processing to generate a chat, image, ppt, email, etc. It is the service that most of us keep trying to avoid where possible, and which students and office workers abuse to shirk their day jobs.

Copilot+ is effectively DirectX for NPU cores, or perhaps a more apt example would be a Microsoft version of CUDA that can operate on any hardware that follows a compatible NPU architecture. It isn’t a ‘service’ as much as a programming platform standard. If software is programed to utilize it, and the hardware is available, then it can render tasks out on the NPU cores instead of GPU or CPU cores.

Microsoft… We all get that you love your marketing terminology and get fixated on branding everything under giant meaningless umbrella words… but oh man did you guys make this all sorts of confusing and misleading. Do you realize how many paranoid people have specifically avoided buying a Copilot+ PC because they thought it actually had something to do with Copilot or AI?! Calling it what it actually is would have garnered a lot more trust and a better adoption curve on the hardware to give programmers a reason to start utilizing it. It is just like CUDA or Tensor cores… sure, it **can** be used for local AI workflows… but it can do all sorts of stuff, not just AI stuff. Just like a modern GPU can be used for graphics… but can also be utilized for highly parallel processes that aren’t directly graphics related. AI is the buzz word that makes the stock go up, but explaining it beyond the buzz words would have really helped the cause a bit.