Alleged 'AI Explorer' system requirements spotted inside Windows 11 version 24H2 code

Microsoft has big plans for May 2024. The company is hosting a special Surface event and its flagship developer conference, Build 2024. Besides announcing new Surface devices, Microsoft is expected to talk a lot about AI and AI-powered features for Windows 11. The so-called "AI File Explorer" is one of those features, and details about it are slowly leaking.

It appears that the upgraded File Explorer in Windows 11 could be exclusive to ARM-powered "AI PCs." Albacore shared their findings on X, revealing that AI Explorer allegedly has the following system requirements:

• An ARM64 processor
• A minimum of 16GB of RAM
• A minimum of 225GB of space
• The Qualcomm Snapdragon Elite Neural Processing Unit (NPU, hardware ID QCOM0D0A)

This discovery matches the previous story about Microsoft raising the base RAM requirement for "AI PCs" to a minimum of 16GB.

It is interesting to see Qualcomm's NPU and ARM64 processors listed as requirements, considering that the latest Intel and AMD chips also have Neural Processing Units built-in. This might indicate that not all "AI PCs" will be equal, and the available feature set will depend on your hardware. Turning "AI Explorer" into an ARM-exclusive feature could also be a Microsoft strategy to make ARM-powered Windows PCs more appealing to the masses.

While official details about "AI File Explorer" are pretty much non-existent, rumors say it will offer some interesting capabilities, such as the ability to interact with it using natural language and make requests like "find me that thing about dinosaurs" or similar.

If you do not plan to purchase a new PC with an ARM chip inside (like this one from Lenovo), you are still on track to get some nice features in Windows 11 version 24H2. Check out our article covering five cool things that are coming soon to Microsoft's operating system. The best part is that there are more to come.

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