The Windows 12 Copilot experience is not a feature you enable. It is an ambient layer — Microsoft's internal name is Proactive Intelligence — that represents a fundamental shift in how the operating system understands and responds to what you are doing.
The Architecture Behind Proactive Intelligence
Proactive Intelligence is powered by two on-device AI models that run continuously on qualifying NPU hardware. The first is a small 1.8-billion-parameter language model — internally designated SLM-Win — optimised for intent classification and text understanding. The second is a semantic embedding model for similarity search across content. Both models are loaded into NPU memory at boot and remain resident, consuming approximately 420 MB of NPU dedicated memory.
The two models communicate through the AI Context Broker, a new OS service that aggregates context signals from registered applications via a new AI Context API. Applications opt in to providing signals and users can disable any app's participation from Settings.
File Explorer: The AI Bar
The most visible expression of Proactive Intelligence is File Explorer's new AI Bar — a thin frosted strip that appears below the command ribbon when the system detects an actionable context. Documented activations include: opening a folder of images (offers AI slideshow, album grouping, or background removal batch), browsing mixed document types (offers to summarise all into a single briefing), opening video files (offers to generate a highlight reel). All inference runs locally on the NPU with no files sent to Microsoft's servers.
Conversational Settings
Windows Settings gains natural-language search that maps intent to settings panels even when the user's words don't match any setting label. Tested queries that now route correctly: "my laptop fan is loud" → Power & battery → Power mode; "screen keeps going to sleep too quickly" → Display → Screen timeout; "I can't connect to my office VPN" → Network & internet → VPN + troubleshooter.
Clipboard Intelligence
The Windows 12 clipboard manager detects content type and surfaces quick actions in the Win+V flyout. Copying a phone number offers to open Phone Link. Copying a tracking number offers the carrier's website. Copying code offers to open Terminal or a registered IDE. Copying a crypto wallet address triggers a security warning about copycat-address fraud.
AI Recall: Rebuilt for Privacy
AI Recall returns in Windows 12 with a completely rebuilt architecture. The original Windows 11 implementation stored screenshot captures in a locally-accessible SQLite database that security researchers demonstrated could be trivially exfiltrated. The Windows 12 implementation stores all Recall data inside a Secure Enclave 2.0 protected memory region — no other process, including the Windows kernel, can read the raw snapshot data. Access requires Windows Hello biometric re-authentication.