Every revolution in tech starts with a better way for normal humans to access computing power — from punch cards and command lines to windows and a mouse to smartphones and touchscreens. AI is poised to be the next leap, Scott Rosenberg and I report.

Why it matters: One big reason the tech world is so giddy over generative AI is that industry veterans see ChatGPT's conversational fluency as a key that can unlock the next level in this game of endowing everyday users with digital powers.

• Think of the hours saved — and, in theory, productivity gained — if you can simply tell your chatbot to clean up your inbox, change your system settings or connect to a printer.
• The upside is, you won't have to know how to do those things yourself. That's a downside, too: It means individual users may end up with less skill and less direct control.

Driving the news: A number of big players are already using the power of large language models to make chat-style interaction a key way to interact with their software.

• Microsoft this week unveiled a Windows Copilot which adds a side pane where users can both summon the AI-powered Bing search engine and change a whole host of settings that, until now, required knowing how to dive into an arcane system of control panels.
• "I think over the coming years, this will become an expectation for how all software works," chief technology officer Kevin Scott said in a statement.
• Microsoft is also adopting the same standard for plug-ins that OpenAI is using for ChatGPT, meaning that the chatbot isn't just a user interface, it's also a new platform for developers to create apps — and a new front end for controlling other software.
• Adobe announced a new generative fill tool for Photoshop that lets people describe what they want to take place in an area, say put a mountain here or remove this object. The company sees big potential in using such descriptive commands to take all manner of actions.

What they're saying: Windows head Panos Panay told Axios that AI is bringing about a "generational shift" in computer interfaces.

• "It will feel magical," Panay said in an interview.

Yes, but: It's going to take time for the full power and nuance of AI-as-interface to emerge, Panay said, pointing out that it took some years after the mouse before we got to a scroll wheel.

• "It's a migration; this isn't an overnight change," he said. "You learned to point and then you learned to scroll."

Be smart: Using a chatbot to interact with software doesn't always mean you are seeing generative AI in action. Sometimes it's just about using natural language to say, change the settings or invoke a series of commands with a single instruction.

The other side: Magical as it often feels, the chat interface comes with its own drawbacks.

• The empty chat window doesn't provide users with much indication of what it can do or how to use it; there's no easy way to poke around and get a sense of its capabilities.

Flashback: Tech companies have talked for years about natural language interfaces. Back in the late 1990s, Clippy used to pop up in Word when it looked like you were writing a letter or resume and might need help.

• But Clippy's abilities were constrained by the limits of computers to understand all the different ways that humans describe the actions they want to take.
• It's only with the arrival of large language models trained on all these ways that computers have reached a point they seem poised to speak our language, rather than humans having to learn to "speak computer."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was elected in 2019 on a pledge to put "the state in a smartphone." That effort has become more complex but also more urgent as a result of Russia's invasion, Axios World's David Lawler reports.

The big picture: The man leading the initiative, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov, tells Axios that Zelensky instructed him to "create the most convenient governance system" in the world.

• The resulting app, Diia, provides citizens with a digital ID and allows them to register a business or obtain dozens of other government services.
• 19 million Ukrainians now use Diia, and the app has been downloaded on 70% of the smartphones in Ukraine, Fedorov says.

Fedorov, 32, never expected to be rolling out some of the newer functions.

• Ukrainians can use Diia to seek evacuation assistance or file a claim if their home is damaged by Russian shelling. Nearly 1 million war bonds have been purchased using the app, according to Fedorov.
• Using an "e-Enemy" feature, they can also submit reports and even videos of Russian troop movements. "There is a situational awareness system and this information is fed into this system," Fedorov explained to Axios. "And then of course they [the military] have to verify — they use satellite images, other sources — before they act on it."
• When millions of Ukrainians were facing blackouts during the World Cup final in December, Fedorov's team decided to stream the match on Diia. More than 1 million people tuned in.

Players have increasingly bristled over talkative characters, yet studios are betting on buzzy AI tech to add even more dialogue to games, Axios' Peter Allen Clark reports.

Driving the news: Developers of Forspoken, one of 2023's earliest big releases for PlayStation 5, updated the game this week to adjust how chatty the main character, Fey, and her magical companion can get.

The big picture: The Forspoken changes follow growing irritation among some players over the quantity of dialogue. As game content has boomed, so has the number of spoken lines in a typical triple-A release.

• Last year's Dying Light 2 was lampooned for boasting about its completion time of 500+ hours, and likewise caught flak for touting "350,000 words, 40,000 lines of dialogue."
• 2022's Horizon Forbidden West and God of War Ragnarök have also been dinged in coverage for extensive chatter.
• "As I traversed through Horizon Forbidden West's beautiful post-post-apocalyptic America as Aloy, I was bombarded with her constant soliloquy on where to go and what to see," Jordan Sutlive wrote for Polygon.

The intrigue: Player irritation is mounting just as studios are experimenting with ways to use AI to give more characters even more to say.

• Assassin's Creed developer Ubisoft unveiled its generative AI Ghostwriter tool in March during the Game Developer Conference. It's designed to let a writer come up with a character and situation, then generate numerous lines that character might say.
• Meanwhile, the use of AI to voice characters is already being hyped by some tech companies as a way to ease the addition of dialogue to games.

On Tap

• Today is National Paper Airplane Day. Feel free to celebrate by printing out Login and folding it into an airplane. Pics welcome.

Trading Places

• Rebecca Hahn, who was one of the last communications professionals standing at Elon Musk's Twitter has joined Tools for Humanity — the parent organization of WorldCoin, co-founded by Sam Altman, Alex Blania and Max Novendstern — as chief communications officer, as Axios' Eleanor Hawkins scooped yesterday.

ICYMI

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warns that the company could pull out of Europe if the EU approves regulation with which it can't find a way to comply. (The Verge)

• This Italian photographer managed to perfectly fit a full moon inside the Arc de Triomphe.