Microsoft is starting to integrate AI shortcuts, or what it calls AI actions, into the File Explorer in Windows 11. These shortcuts let you right-click on a file and quickly get to Windows AI features like blurring the background of a photo, erasing objects, or even summarizing content from Office files.
Four image actions are currently being tested in the latest Dev Channel builds of Windows 11, including Bing visual search to find similar images on the web, the blur background and erase objects features found in the Photos app, and the remove background option in Paint.
Obligatory “learn to use your computer and install another OS” post. You’ll probably find that your computer becomes MORE useful, not less.
Most people don’t realize how slow Windows is. When you try something else, you realize how much time you have been spending just waiting for Windows to do things. Our computers can be a lot faster than Windows lets them be.
A couple of weeks ago I rebooted into Windows for the first time in well over 8 months, as I needed to use a piece of software I don’t have on Linux (it’s available, I’m just refusing to pay for it and no alternative method has materialised), and getting anything done was incredibly frustrating.
First everything had to update, and I was forced to log in to a bunch of stuff. My web browser spontaneously vanished, as did Discord. No idea why. Opening Explorer consistently took several seconds because it always decided to poll my external drive before displaying anything, even if I didn’t do shit in my external drive.
Explorer being slow applies on my work PC too, and I have to use Windows on that. Every day I wonder how it’d be to put Linux on it.
Nautilus just opens the moment I click on it. Always.
I recently swapped my Dad’s Windows computer with my old machine, which I installed Linux on ahead of time.
I told him it was a faster machine - which it was just slightly in the hardware sense, a very minor upgrade. A half-truth to encourage the transition.
But of course, it’s running Linux, not Windows.
Next day he phones me up really happy that it’s “so much faster than the old machine!”
And it really is a lot faster, but it’s not the hardware. It’s just not getting bogged down with all the crap Windows constantly does in the background.
Either way, mission accomplished.
I’m having the best time computing on linux again. It had been about 10 years since I last had it since I kind of just forgot about it or thought it wouldn’t fit my needs. I hardly boot to my windows drive now except to play pubg.
No one asked for this.
Some senior exec at Microsoft asked for this.
He didn’t ask.
Took the words right out of my mouth.
He could not find back his porn and needs AI so he can ask to find the right clip?
This seems more like a warning to me.
It’s a threat. To your security. To your data. To you in general.
So? Windows/MS …What’s new then?
i’m so tired of ai
Dear baby jesus. If I weren’t a Linux user I’d scream to stop all of this AI stuffing
Then again, I’m a Linux user and I’m just laughing.
Join Linux, come to the dark side, we got cookies
Every single story about windows 11 makes me hope I can convince IT to let me migrate my work laptop to linux before October.
I’m a senior IT type. My work laptop is Debian.
We like good pastries, coffee, good booze and feeling appreciated. Go make friends with the senior IT types and the help desk manager. Trust me it’s with it.
I was actually delighted when Windows 11 added tabs to notepad and explorer, and layers make MSPaint worth using.
But all of these things became buggy messes. Explorer showing ads for OneDrive and inexplicable behavior, On more than one occasion, the address bar would become unusable, and I deeply resent having to use the mouse to do simple tasks.
Now I know that this was prelude to Copilot.
So now I daily drive Debian making me a computer user, not a resource for billionaires to mine.
Article doesn’t state this but I assume this is done via Copilot, so anything you use it on goes direct to Microsoft cloud, right?
Some Copilot functions are done locally on some computers with the appropriate NPU chips. But it’s Microsoft, so they’ll be sending data home either way.
Yes, but them not calling it out in the article makes me thing this is not the case here. If it would be done locally, it would not be as bad. But I somehow doubt it would be.
I don’t think so. It says it’s part of file explorer, so that would be part of the overall system, right?
I 100% expect so. It’s much easier and cheaper to do it this way and also gives them data to train copilot further
I might be wrong, though
Just because the UI exists in file explorer doesn’t mean the data processing is happening locally. It’s likely happening on MS’s cloud. Maybe some actions happening locally on new machines with NPU chips
I want to believe you, but I’ve been burned before.
I’m not sure what you mean. I’m saying that this work is almost for sure being sent to Microsoft’s servers, which is certainly a bad thing. That is burning anyone who uses it
I thought you meant they wouldn’t be processing your files locally. You’re saying they’re taking all of your local files and sending them to the cloud though?
Likely in pretty much every case they are taking files that you perform an AI function on and uploading them to their cloud.
I said the few exceptions might be very low effort work that could run on the new NPU chips coming with some PCs. But I doubt they would event do that because it’s passing up the opportunity to use consumer data to train their models.
So yes, if you use an AI feature, MS is taking your file(s) and training it’s models on it
I wouldn’t bet on it.
Don’t get me wrong - this is awful and is just another misstep in a long line of missteps by Microsoft.
But I also can’t help but chuckle at this. It is so clear that “AI” as it has been developed today is hitting a peak of what it can do. These corporations are desperate to shove it in every product they possibly can to drive sales and valuations to make shareholders wet and yet the only things they ever advertise AI being capable of are crap like summaries, background removal, background insertion, grammar/typo checking, list making, web searching, etc. Most of it being crap that I have never once heard of a person being even remotely interested in… and why would they be? Why would someone want to edit their photos to add a different sky, new people, etc to create memories that never happened?
I disagree. If this is in your system, they’re going to use every file on your computer to train their AI. That’s my guess.
I’m sure they will. It’s Microsoft, so I’d expect nothing less than that.
I am generally opposed to the integration of generative AI in consumer hardware, since it doesn’t have much practical utility at this point.
However, the features described in this article mostly have to do with extracting information from images. This is actually quite useful! For example, macOS allows users to select text and automatically mask objects from images. It’s a feature I use heavily and wish other operating systems had good support for.
However, the features described in this article mostly have to do with extracting information from images.
You said “mostly” and also, I don’t want microsoft looking at any of my images without them asking first. They already have deleted images from my computer if I save them in their designated “my pictures” folder. I don’t trust them.
No they’re not because I’m on Linux
I just get happier with each passing month that I don’t use windows anymore. The freedom of having my hardware and data no longer serving the corporate interests of the operating system vendor is great.
Microsoft will have AI tracking everything I do and taking screenshots as well. Just what I have been asking for. /s
Windows 11 doesn’t even have a working file manager or text editor anymore. This is not a serious operating system.
It has both out of the box. I just returned a brand new laptop with it on it.
Win 11 is bad enough, there’s no need to make up things.
There’s no need to be hyperbolic. I’m happy with my decision to de-Windows as much as I can (which still isn’t 100%, btw) but this assertion is just ridiculous.
I literally cannot use a program that has AI crap integrated into it, because of data security rules in the contracts I have to follow. If I used Windows 11, I would have to never use Notepad, and find a way to remove Explorer. (Explorer creates the desktop icons and taskbar, so good luck with that.)
Cool, so that’s a specific problem with your needed use case. That’s not what you said before.
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Notepad and WFE get thrown off hell in a cell into an announcer’s table by Kate and Dolphin, respectively, but to say they “don’t work” is intellectually lazy and dishonest.
Who are you trying to convince right now? Linux and macOS users are probably never going back to Windows if they can help it, and Windows users will correctly say “but it’s right there; I’m using it right now”.
Are you ever going to elaborate on this lie?
