Microsoft is currently fixing the system requirements for the upcoming Windows 11 version, 24H2, which is expected to be generally available in September or October 2024. The feature update will be AI-heavy and as such some CPU instructions are thought to be necessary.

While initially only PopCnt seems to be necessary, a mandatory SSE4.2 requirement seems to be added to the underlying code as well, and old unsupported CPUs that don’t pack these instructions will no longer be able to boot into Windows 11 24H2, even when using workaround tricks that only work on the latest version of Windows .

One of the features associated with the upcoming AI-rich Windows 11 is the “AI File Explorer”, apparently also known as Advanced Pilot. Initial details of the AI ​​file explorer were revealed by reports in March. Essentially, it looks like a modern version of Cortana. For those who may not have been following, the Cortana app was killed off in August of last year.

Microsoft also defines a baseline requirement for the artificial intelligence file explorer. Code related to such system requirements was recently discovered. Windows user and Twitter user (now X) Albacore, who first exposed the requirements code, discovered that a warning message would be displayed on such non-compliant systems. It is quite similar to the missing PopCnt message or system requirements not met watermark.

Oddly enough, Microsoft seems to have determined the need for an ARM64 processor for AI File Explorer. Hence, it’s possible that the feature might be a Surface-exclusive feature, or maybe Microsoft will add AMD64 ISA to the list later if it intends to bring the feature to x86 PCs as well. After all, the company did announce enterprise AI PCs alongside AMD just over a week ago.

Meanwhile, aside from ARM64 processors, 16GB of system memory has also been set as a recommendation for AI File Explorer.