[Music] [Adam Mott] Hey, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us today. My name is Adam, I'm a product manager on the Surface team. [Erica Arnold] I'm Erica, I work in product management, developing creative experiences for the portfolio.
We're in an incredibly exciting moment in our industry, where rapid advances in hardware and AI are making significant improvements to creative workflow. Today, we're going to share just a few examples of how the latest Surface devices, combined with Adobe and Microsoft software, can unlock new experiences that can save you time so you can focus on what matters most, your creative expression. So, before we get started, Erica, I know this is a space that's near and dear to you. Can you just tell us a little bit about what creativity means to you? Yeah. Thanks, Adam. So, for me, creativity is really the output or product of inspiration. It's what we do with something that inspires or motivates us. And I think it can take on a lot of different forms. It could be the way we shape a thought, our approach to accomplishing something, or the type most of us are familiar with is, an end product, something that we actually produce or create. But more than that, it's just kind of this sparkly lens through which I choose to walk through the world with that generates joy, gives me a sense of authenticity or play in whatever I'm doing.
I think it manifests itself in individuals very differently based on the environment they grow up in, the people, the tools that they're exposed to, personal preferences, and the resources that come to us throughout our lives. And I think because of that, the number of people who are actually exposed to the digital arts from a young age is rather limited.
With that being said though, we're living in this exciting digital age and why I can't wait to talk about devices with you today is because they're more accessible in a way than ever before. And I view them as really kind of the canvas, the jumping off point for someone to manifest or achieve their goals. Whether it's starting a screenplay or learning to sketch or starting your own small business. And so, I'm excited to learn from you what you have in the new service lineup. Can you maybe, before I get into that, tell us a little bit about how creativity and AI and hardware are all starting to intersect? Yeah, so this is something I think a lot about, actually. And it's worth noting that AI has been in the creative industry for a lot longer than most of us realize. From something as simple as using the auto-complete functionality in an email to game design, CGI, and special effects and film-making. Even auto corrections and photo editing have been around since the '80s. But Generative AI is really kind of creating new content like text, images, and videos through large language models and machine learning models. And while the concepts for this technology have been around for quite some time, recent advancements in technology are suddenly enabling us to build models trained more extensively on datasets with many different parameters to produce more accurate, higher quality results, which kind of laid the foundation for some of these new models we're seeing show up in Firefly, Stable Diffusion, and even ChatGPT like functionalities that were enabled with large language models. With that being said, there's certainly a lot of controversy over Generative AI, embracing it and adopting it in the creative industry. And I think it makes for a really good conversation and debate. At the core, I'm personally excited for all of the benefits, and I don't believe that Generative AI can actually replace my creative intent, imagination, or emotion, these inherently very human traits which are in essence the driving force behind art. But really exciting time to be in hardware because we can completely transform creative workflows and take advantage of this new technology and features by optimizing our silicon to process and accelerate AI functionality, but also to redesign, form factors so they kind of support this new way of working that's very much human centered. So, Adam, we have a lot of creatives tuning in today. Tell them about our new Surface lineup. Yeah. Thanks, Erica. And just hearing you talk earlier, about creativity, it just really inspired me because as we build these devices, the entire team spends so much time thinking about how they get used. And creators and creation is always top of mind for all of us. To realize these new next generation experiences, we had to build new devices that can really leverage on device AI. So let's get into the new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop. So, the new Surface Pro is the most flexible, most powerful 2-in-1 out there. It's under 2 pounds and has an ultra-portable design that can replace your tablet and your laptop. We've revolutionized the 2-in-1 keyboard. It's now designed to be used both attached and detached. The Flex Keyboard can adapt to you wherever you need to stay productive. The Surface Laptop is our thin and light touchscreen laptop, delivering an incredible typing experience and the all new haptic touchpad. It's available in either 13.8 or 15-inch screen sizes. These devices are both absolutely beautiful. They come in four stunning colors, platinum, black, dune, and sapphire. They have razor thin bezels, modern lines, and they come in sleek aluminum enclosures. But they're not just all looks. These pack serious power. We're using the all new Snapdragon X Plus and Elite processors with game changing performance. The new Pro is up to 90% faster, and the new laptop is up to 80% faster than the previous generation. The new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop are also Copilot+PCs. That means in addition to the CPU and GPU, they have neural processing units, or an NPU, capable of up to 45 trillion operations per second. That's essential for running on device AI models. But even with all that power, these devices are efficient. They run cool, and they have incredible battery life. On Surface Pro, you can get up to 14 hours of local video playback. On Surface Laptop, you can expect up to 22 hours. That means you have the battery life that can last you the whole day wherever your creativity takes you. And whether you're in your studio powering 3K, 4k displays, or you're at the airport sketching out a design because you just had inspiration strike. Surface Pro and Surface Laptop keep you connected with lightning fast Wi-Fi 7 and optional 5G available on Surface Pro. Both these devices have gorgeous 120 Hertz HDR displays with Dolby Vision, and that's incredibly important if you're working with or creating HDR content. And for the first time, we're introducing a new OLED option for Surface Pro with a near infinite contrast ratio. Cameras are also an important part for connecting and collaborating, and our new Surface Studio cameras take it to the next level. The custom lens has incredible sharpness, accurate color capturing, and great low light performance. They have a wide field of view, fast facial login with Windows Hello, and thanks to onboard AI in the NPU, feature great camera enhancements with Windows Studio Effects. And on Surface Pro, you also have a rear camera capable of capturing 4K video, so you can capture and edit on the same device. So, these are incredible devices, but they only truly shine when they're in action helping you create. So with that, I'll turn it back over to Erica who's going to show you what's possible on the new Surface. Awesome. Thanks so much, Adam. I have been using these devices for many months now, and I absolutely love them. They are truly lightning fast. So, let's talk about how AI makes creativity more accessible. I truly believe this. It is making creative expression more accessible, easier to everyone than ever before. Going back to my earlier comment about how creativity shows up differently for people based on their upbringing and exposure, not everyone had or has the resources to learn these highly specialized skill sets for digital design and thus felt more creatively stunted in the digital arts. I for one experienced that in a major way. I've always been super creative growing up, but more in the analog sense. Love to dance, make greeting cards, make costumes in my closet, what have you. But I remember by the time I got to college and I wanted to kind of get more into the design space, I felt extremely overwhelmed taking a digital design class. And I actually ended up dropping out because I felt like I had to learn a whole brand-new language and ultimately just felt super frustrated that this visual, this creative imagination and potential I had in my mind, I couldn't get it to map out on the screen in front of me. And so, it makes me sad to know that there are many people that start from a place of, like, pure excitement and this awesome imagination and intent, but then they kind of drop it because they feel too overwhelmed or they don't know where to start. So, I'm going to do a quick Adobe Express demo because I think it's an incredible app for lightweight creatives to just kind of help get into that flow in a way that feels very seamless and intuitive.
So, Adam, I don't know if you knew this, but I actually host a fashion show every October-- I did not know that. Called the Haunted Runway. Okay. And so, I'm going to use Adobe Express generative template to help me design a beautiful, visually appealing poster ad. Awesome. Okay, so, you'll see this generate template icon. I'm going to do-- Save the date for a spooky fashion show.
Let's see what it comes up with.
Oh, here we go. This is exactly what I want.
That looks really cool. Awesome. So, okay. Great vibe. Exactly what I'm going for. Look how easy it is to replace this from my own images. It's from last year's show. It automatically set a filter, gave it that greenish blue tint, and now all I've got to do is make a few simple edits.
Let's try Haunted Runway.
Fashion frights. Oh, I like that. But we're going to add Septentrio Winery, doors open, 6PM.
And if we want to get super wild with it, I do have a lot of international friends. I can actually go ahead and translate this into multiple languages. Let's do Italian, Japanese, and Polish so my grandparents can read it.
And just like that, I've got four posters in four different languages. That's amazing. And it's so simple and easy. It really is. Creating something that complex that fast is wild. And I can share it on social media. I can invite you to collaborate. It's just a very awesome digital sort of canvas experience. How cool. So, I really love Adobe Express because it is so simple, so user-friendly, and it actually empowers me to take that next step to want to create more personalized content that allows me to come up with compelling visuals in really no time at all and sort of integrate additional play into my daily life. The barrier to entry is so much lower. So when we talk about AI extending creativity, making it more accessible than ever before, I also get really excited when I think about what this means for creatives with disabilities. I actually met with a girl recently who experiences chronic fatigue in her hands and her fingers. So as a result, she spends a lot of her initial process drafting ideas and thoughts in her mind before she ever even touches an analog brush or digital tools. So I think having the option of using AI will result in a lot more people with powerful imaginations actually exercising them and having the opportunity to articulate and manifest that vision. Let's talk about how AI can help give time back to creators. Maybe you can share a few examples of how you see this happening in the creative field today. Sure. So, giving time back to people for what they do best. So apart from extending the ability to participate in the digital design world to everyone, this is really the second biggest benefit I see with generative AI features. Especially with Firefly coming out across the Adobe products, they are truly reducing the tedium for professional creators and giving time back to just be creative. And ideally spending less time in front of a screen. So, like a quick easy example of this is the progression from rotoscoping, to, like, auto masking a feature like that. When I was younger, actually, me and my little brother would make these music videos. And so, we would hoist a literal green screen bedsheet in our garage and I'd try to, like, dance on top of it. And then it would take him literally hours to mask the dancer, me, and repeat that several times across multiple frames just to put a fun background behind it. And things like that are, you know, single-click edits today, almost instantaneous. I had a green screen too growing up. No. Thankfully, most of those videos are lost to time.
That's awesome. So, a few more examples of how Premiere Pro is making this super easy is the new text-based editing features. For example, slimming down an interview between two people might have taken hours before, simply because you need to listen to every sound bite, splice, chop it all up the right way that you want. But now, this is significantly reduced because you can edit your video all based on your transcript. So, you can imagine deleting certain text, swapping them out, and watching that frame in your editing panel just completely respond to your, text-based actions. It's life changing. That's really cool. That's wild. Yeah. But I'm going to give a different demo today on Generative Recolor. Great. So also, traditionally, like, post editing, color corrections is also very time consuming. And now with Generative Recolor, I can start to blend kind of all my different shots. So if you look at my keyframe on the left here, I want all my visuals to kind of match that hue. And while these are all nautical themed, they're kind of slightly different shades. We're getting a little bit more turquoise green in here. And so, what I can do is actually get into this comparison view, so side by side, and apply a color match. Oh, wow. Just like that, it picks up that same more royal blue hue, and I can go ahead and repeat that across all of my different clips. That's instant. That is so wild. It's super impressive, saving me a ton of time, and it can even kind of put a blue fade over this beautiful landscape shot. And so again, this is like an example of one of these features that is saving me a lot of time as a creative but not replacing my intention or my imagination here, my vision at the end of the day. Yeah. And just even running Premiere Pro on a device this thin and light is wild. Oh, and I actually have Photoshop running in the background. Wow. That's awesome. Can you listen? I don't hear anything here. No fan noise? Huge. Yeah. No. It's true. We're super excited that Premiere Pro and Illustrator are actually now available on ARM devices as well. So, today you've talked to us about how AI can make creativity more accessible. You've told us how it can give people time back to be more creative. I know you do a ton of work with inputs. And I know you've been working on how natural input combined with AI can really change creative workflows. Can you show us a little more about that today? Yeah. Definitely. So I think one of the most exciting things about LLMs and AI is that it's providing us the opportunity to re-architect devices so they actually reflect the natural ways in which humans think and interact, which if you think about it, it's not always on a keyboard and mouse. So using my pen in tandem with the Flex Keyboard actually gives me the most flexible, ergonomic, and comfortable setup yet, and it practically encourages me to jump into my creative flow. Let me show you what I mean by this. So as you can see here, I can, with that kickstand, adjust my posture so it's comfortable. I'm going to open up Photoshop. And Photoshop users love their keyboard shortcuts. Absolutely. So this is kind of a dream. Let's start with this image. And the first thing you'll notice for zooming in and out, how responsive the display is. And on this OLED, it's even brighter, more vibrant. You can really notice all the different colors. It's gorgeous. And so, I'm going to select J to quickly remove that swimmer.
The Lasso Tool to grab around the seawall here, and you can see how much more fun and streamlined this is with my pen. I'm going to generate and just watch it disappear. This is truly incredible. I'm still mind blown by Generative Fill in Photoshop. Sweet. And just like that, no more seawall and it gives me three different options to choose from. That is so cool. That is unbelievable. Yeah. Okay. So the coolest thing though is the new Brush tool here. And now I can specify exactly where I would like to add a rainbow in this case. So, the Generative Fill will only happen within that selected space. Wow. Again, another reason why just having something as precise as a pen is really super helpful for a task like this that involves rounds and arcs. Yeah. It's crazy how the natural input of pen, of touch, of being able to still have access to your keyboard shortcuts, which I know are so important in Photoshop. It's just such a powerful creation experience for such a small device. I know. I know. I was actually impressed that Photoshop even runs on this. I want to show you one more just because this is so fun.
Using this new Brush tool, I can make everything black and white...
super quickly.
And then I can go ahead and subtract to leave the color on my key subject here. And notice with pen how much easier this is to manipulate, reduce my brush size...
get this fun red sleeve.
And just like that, I have a pro grade edit in less than a minute. That looks amazing. Thank you. That was so easy. That's wild. What I'm most excited about with natural input is I think as technology continues to evolve, our devices are going to take on different shapes and form factors. But I think we will be heavily reliant on natural inputs like touch, pen, and voice as we move into that next realm. Yeah. It was incredible watching you use all these different inputs to make that whole workflow so seamless and easy. So that was wild. I am very inspired right now. But I do want to circle back to the NPU we've talked about in these devices. The powerful NPU helps us run AI models locally on the device. Can you help me understand what types of creative experiences those NPUs might start to unlock in the future? Yes. Absolutely. So I think most creatives listening in here can relate. But whenever you're using video editing software, graphic design tools like we showed, they're very resource intensive so that whether they're pulling from the CPU or GPU, things like slowing your computer down, crashing, stopping the program completely is a huge pain, and that's where our hardware comes into play. So what we've done, as you mentioned, was introduce the Neural Processing Unit. And by offloading some of these more resource intensive AI tasks to that NPU within the silicon, we can actually compute that task so much faster, but also free up space on the CPU and the GPU to continue running your other creative programs in the background like we were doing here.
So I think what I'll do is walk through the co-creator demo. Sure. To show you a little bit about what I mean. Alright. So this is co-creator. Now what I'm about to show you is a diffusion-based experience. Meaning, we start with a random image and go through a series of diffusion or denoising as that random image tries to match up with our text prompt. In this case, let's do a field of Icelandic poppies.
Awesome. Now, the unique thing about this experience is that the generated output is not only taking account my text prompt but also my inked strokes. So notice how this kind of purple grassy thing that I just drew is suddenly turned into an actual field of Icelandic poppies. That is amazing. I'm going to add something in the foreground here so we get some kind of popping out of the field. Now, there are five different machine learning models running locally in tandem to optimize for highest quality output over minimum number of inference steps, making the experience feel truly co-creative, the model responding to every single stroke.
Now you'll notice there's this Creativity slider here in the left. The farther I slide to the left, the more the generated image looks like my original drawing. The farther I slide to the right, the more freedom or creativity I provide the AI with to play with. You can see it captured the four poppies that I wanted in the foreground just like my drawing here.
Now I can actually take this a step further and iterate on top of the generated image. Let's say I wanted to make this at sunset, and I'm going to draw a golden sun setting behind the poppies here.
You can see the generated image is already transformed to a little bit more, the sun going down. The hues are a little different. And sure enough, it picked up exactly where I wanted that sun to be melting into the horizon. Wow. That's incredible. So you can see my NPU is working hard here. So I'm not actually taxing the rest of the system like the CPU or the GPU, and that's making this very fast, very responsive. That's awesome. That is so cool to see. And my final product. Beautiful.
The speed and iteration is wild. It's so interesting to watch you kind of create with the AI. It's not just an image generation. It's working with you at every stroke to kind of keep iterating until you find what you're trying to get to. Right. I love that. I feel in control of my vision and it's literally playing a supporting role in that sense. Wow. That is so awesome. What I am most excited for though is, like, for the rest of the ecosystem to start adopting and leveraging this technology, I think there is opportunities for it to rapidly reduce rendering speeds, streamline your creative flow, so really looking forward to how other third parties start to adopt as well. That's right, Erica. And as I said at the beginning, this is an incredibly exciting moment for our industry. NPUs and AI on device are going to revolutionize creative workflows. So thanks once again, Erica, for the wonderful demos. And thank you to all of you for spending the time with us today. Hopefully, you now know a little more about Surface hardware, and Microsoft and Adobe software are going to come together with AI to empower creators to do their best work. For those of you in Miami, we'd love to meet you if you want to stop by the Microsoft booth on the show floor. Have a great MAX. Thanks so much, everyone.
Whoo!
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