Microsoft's recent Snapdragon-powered Surface Laptop and Surface Pro launch was surprisingly absent the usual Copilot+ branding, aside from as a callout to the inclusion of the actual AI assistant on the devices. Apparently, this was an intentional branding change, according to Surface Corporate Vice President, Brett Ostrum, in a new interview with Windows Central.

The purpose for Copilot+ PCs was to be able to deliver experiences. So it was to define a certain category of devices with a certain bar and metric, like for example, a 45 TOPS NPU... So from that perspective, it's more offering the same experiences, probably without just using [Copilot+] terminology now.

In retrospect, the Copilot+ branding could almost be seen as a transitional period, when local AI processing was still a new feature. When Microsoft launched the Copilot+ brand in 2024, it touted the PCs as "a new category of Windows PCs designed for AI," and many PCs now meet that minimum spec, now that the NPUs have become ubiquitous.

It also doesn't seem as though the shift away from Copilot+ branding started with Microsoft's new Surface line-up. NVIDIA's latest RTX Spark PCs meet the minimum NPU requirements for Copilot+ branding, but the branding is also conspicuously absent from those hardware launches.