It’s happening. Microsoft appears to be quietly moving on from the “Copilot+ PC” branding, even though the AI features that gave the label meaning aren’t going anywhere.

The company’s newest Surface Pro 12-inch and Surface Laptop 13-inch, announced this week with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X2 Plus processor, no longer carry the Copilot+ PC branding. That’s notable because Microsoft introduced the Copilot+ name in 2024 as a way to distinguish Windows PCs capable of running a new generation of AI features locally.

Microsoft Surface CVP Brett Ostrum confirmed the change in an interview with Windows Central, saying the new Surface machines “are not called Copilot+ PCs.” At the same time, he made it clear that the hardware still meets the requirements that previously defined a Copilot+ PC, with Microsoft continuing to emphasize on-device AI and hybrid AI experiences.

So, in classic tech-branding fashion, the thing is still there. The name just isn’t.

The new Surface devices retain access to the features associated with the Copilot+ platform, including enhanced Windows Search, Click to Do, Windows Studio Effects, and Live Captions with translation. Windows Recall is also part of that feature set, although its troubled history has arguably made it one of the more recognizable examples of Microsoft’s complicated AI rollout. These experiences rely on hardware with a sufficiently capable NPU, with the previous Copilot+ requirements calling for more than 40 TOPS of AI processing performance.

Microsoft’s messaging around Windows AI has also shifted. Rather than presenting AI as something that belongs to a special class of “Copilot+ PCs,” the company increasingly talks about AI experiences as part of Windows 11 more broadly. The Copilot app itself is also being expanded into a more comprehensive experience with features such as Home, Code and Autopilot.

That makes the Copilot+ label increasingly awkward. If Microsoft wants AI to be a normal part of the Windows experience, putting a special badge on only certain machines starts to feel less useful.

The branding has already been losing some of its importance elsewhere. Microsoft has backed away from requiring a dedicated Copilot key on PC keyboards, and it has also been removing the Copilot branding from some AI features in applications such as Notepad and Paint.

The interesting part is that Microsoft isn’t abandoning the underlying hardware push. The new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop are still being marketed around on-device AI performance. Microsoft says the latest Snapdragon X2 Plus-powered machines deliver up to 95% faster on-device AI performance compared with the previous generation.

That suggests the company isn’t suddenly saying AI PCs were a bad idea. Instead, it appears to be treating local AI capabilities as a standard part of modern Windows hardware rather than something that needs its own flashy label.

And honestly, that may be the inevitable destination for the whole “AI PC” era. Once enough Windows laptops have NPUs capable of running these workloads, calling them “AI PCs” starts to become about as useful as calling a laptop a “Wi-Fi PC.”

The Copilot+ PC brand arrived with plenty of fanfare in 2024. Roughly two years later, Microsoft’s newest Surface hardware is quietly leaving the name behind while keeping the technology underneath.

It’s happening. Copilot+ is apparently becoming less of a product category and more of a historical footnote — at least as far as the branding is concerned.