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.
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.
This is a whole new level of data mining, which is why they want it. Now they will scan everything that’s open.
they want to justify the cost of using AI, which they admit to not generating any profit, they are trying to sell off as much data as they can, so they can offsett the cost of power/water intensive AI.
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.
Tabs in Notepad is a nice touch. It allows multiple notes in one window and caches those notes if you close without saving, yet still stupid simple. Except that fucking copilot icon staring at me in the corner…
Layers in MS Paint just feels like unnecessary feature creep.
Thanks to that stupid AI (or more pathetically, something more basic?) notepad takes forever to load now. One of the main advantages it used to have: gone.
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.
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?
If Linux was more compatible with a lot of programs/games there would be absolutely no reason to install windows ever again
I finally switched to full-time Linux last year and I haven’t missed anything. The only stuff that doesn’t work (and doesn’t have a good alternative) are games with invasive anti-cheat that I wanted to boycott anyway.
Most is the anti cheat games are not working on Windows either. They only give you some dubious error message.
I’ll just go by protondb.com and most what I want to play is either gold or platinum rated, or even native.
I only have 106 games in my library, and out of those 66 are native, 43 are gold or platinum and 1 is unrated. I’ve bought nearly all of then before even switching from Windows to Linux about nine months ago.
Using arch btw.
Proton is so good that often games run better with Proton than native too. Usually because the developer puts little effort in the linux native version. Proton is such a godsend.
I’ve had this experience with both
GungeonTrine and Slay The Spire.
Linux is compatible with a lot more than it used to be, and for those stubborn programs, there are usually FOSS alternatives, or emulation/compatibility layers. Hell, my machine runs games faster through Proton on Linux in 1440p than it did natively on Windows in 1080p.
Well, you either switch and learn to use compatible software or you can keep complaining about enshittification for the rest of your life.
I installed Zorin a couple of months ago and I’ve had no issue playing any game that I’ve wanted or any game already in my Steam library. I was warned that “there might be problems using Linux” but it literally works better than when I had W11
might be difficult for the layperson to agree to that,
Wine or Proton will make just bout anything you run on windows run.
I’m not missing anything, even games run fine with Wine/Proton. Also, a lot of the Linux games a really fun! (I personally enjoy Xonotic and SuperTuxKart. I also like to play custom roms with mgba) The only thing I’m missing is pretty much ONE really niche network program thing which didn’t have a Linux version. Everything else either has a Linux version, is a Windows game that can be run with Wine, or has some Linux alternative (think inkscape, kdenlive, okular)
Yeah but having to use third party software to run games is annoying and it’s probably buggy and you more than likely get errors
I mainly play WoW and I doubt that’ll run effectively.
Just looking up online how to install it already looks tedious.
Just get lutris and I expect it works just fine. Worked fine for overwatch, so i expect WoW too.
But you’re right, launchers are usually the biggest issue when its comes to compatibility. Especially that completely useless piece of shit Rockstar peddles.
I rather run everything in third party apps than deal with Windows again,. But each his own of course.
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I mean all I’m using is Steam, adding them as “non-steam games”. I’ve also found some game art to make it look nice. For me at least, I haven’t run into any issues besides at one point one of my games was missing a few shaders causing it to render improperly (I forgot to move the files from my Windows installation, but after I did everything worked!)
It wasn’t difficult to install at all! I just installed steam (for fedora you need to make sure you enable third-party repos when furst installing the OS) and that’s basically it. I’ve also installed Wine manually (not very hard, just “sudo dnf install wine” on fedora) to run a few non-game programs like some compiled .exe programs I made a few years ago by running “wine [program name]”. It’s crazy how simple it all is now!
I mainly play WoW and I doubt that’ll run effectively.
What networking program? If it’s not some proprietary protocol I bet there is a Linux tool that does it.
A VPN. I couldn’t get V2rayA (the vpn uses v2ray, there’s a win + mac app for that specific vpn but not linux) to work. I might have to have another crack at it soon…
I don’t understand why a VPN needs special software to work honestly but I guess that’s valid. It’s likely it would “work” in wine but idk if it will be able to do what it needs to.
not special software, but it has an app that lets you log in on win and mac. On Linux, I was able to log in and see all the servers but when I set it as proxy it didn’t work :( I might try again later
Sounds great but AI so Lemmings will hate it.
And you’d be correct. I don’t need or want any of that crap on my personal machine.
Pretty sure it’s opt in? So… don’t use it?
I’m pretty sure it is or at least will be at some point
You don’t want to be able to easily edit photos on your personal machine?
You don’t want to be able to do a reverse image search right from explorer?
And you’re against people having the option to do these things……why?
You don’t want to be able to easily edit photos on your personal machine?
That’s called MS Paint. It already exists.
You don’t want to be able to do a reverse image search right from explorer?
No! Why would I want more shit calling back to the mothership about my files on my personal computer?
And you’re against people having the option to do these things……why?
When did I ever say that?
MS Paint doesn’t give you advanced features like background blurring/removal and object removal.
Why would I want more shit calling back to the mothership
They’re not “calling back to the mothership”. Why do you think they are?
When did I ever say that?
By being against them adding these features.
MS Paint doesn’t give you advanced features like background blurring/removal and object removal.
Nor should it. It’s fucking MS PAINT, not Photoshop. If you want advanced features, use something more advanced. Adding shit to MS Paint when it’s gone virtually unchanged for decades without complaint is unnecessary feature creep.
They’re not “calling back to the mothership”. Why do you think they are?
LMAO
By being against them adding these features.
You understand the terms “opt-in” and “opt-out”, yes?
MS paint isn’t getting these features - the photos app is.
Also that’s a horrible reason to never improve programs lol.
LMAO
Oh you’ve got these features and can show us the logs of background blur calling back to MS?! Awesome, how’d you get them early? Uncle work for Microsoft?
You didn’t say you want them to be opt-in or opt-out, you said you don’t want them on your computer.
So lemmings = people who want to maintain full control of their PC rather than relinquishing various tasks to a fancy auto-complete?
What control are these features relinquishing?
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
Microsoft will have AI tracking everything I do and taking screenshots as well. Just what I have been asking for. /s
If it ran with local model(s), as in, ran on your PC entirely, I would have no problem with this.
It does appear to be local.
As long as the feature could be disabled as well
That too
Sadly everything is connected to microsofts cloud services which I just don’t trust for an infinite number of reasons.
They’re better make it so the context menu doesn’t take 2s to fully load while moving the bottom rows around first.
Bitch, every valid action for a file is in the diving registry, sorted by file type. Why do you need to think about this?
possible issues:
- blurred a part of the photo that shouldn’t be blurred, data loss
- erased the wrong object, data loss
- deleted large chunks of content in my docs/ppts/spreadsheets I wanted to keep, data loss
This is a really bad idea
letting AI do whatever it wants to your files is not very good…
But if you stick all of your files into OneDrive and turn on version history you can keep trying… /s
Damn I thought it was going to be at least useful like a text prompt.
“Search all these files dumped and find me the ones from my old pc, move them all to the same location on the biggest spare partition that isn’t the os one, and then organize them into folders by general idea without breaking up the coherency of the directories. And do it without losing the existing modified or created dates. Retain the original organization in an xml doc that you can read, just in case I don’t like the organization and want to try again.”
Or
“Install all libre stuff and all of the most useful windows tools. Delete, disable, tear out, and block all telemetry from this Windows installation. There must be privacy and zero enshittification on this computer. Go through, file by file, including all hidden and file systems and services, reading through each and every binary, and decompile, rip out any spyware or telemetry, and recompile. You have a week and this system will be disconnected from the internet entirely for the duration. Go.”
This is the type of ai that would actually be useful to me. Imagine the power of being able to fully delegate lower level tasks like this.
“all your files are now on onedrive.”
FFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU
I’d buy that for a dollar.
Someday… 🥹
For the sake of argument, how do you expect something like that to be made for a dollar?
In China, and poorly? I dunno. You’ve never seen Robocop?
I haven’t seen Robocop yet… I need to. Saw some clips last night. Looks like fun.
It’s great. Don’t bother with the sequels, though.
But I enjoy terrible sequels…
In all seriousness, half the reason I want to watch Robocop is because of the “futuristic” Ford Taurus. I had a 1992 Taurus (second gen) for a couple years and simultaneously loved and hated that car.
What i would like an ai to do:
"Go through this mega dump of ROM files, if there are any that are (g) (j) (f) (s), delete them. If there are multiples, find the ! and delete all other copies.
What they attempt to give me: “we fucked up notepad with clippy mk II!”
Yeah, I’m using AI to create some simple python programs to do some work on my files. For example a popular music download site is giving you a “Artist - Album.zip” and Jellyfin likes it to be organized into Artist/Album and I created a simple python script that unzips everything into the correct structure. Or a simple script that searches multiple folders for the biggest files / duplicate files.
Yes, I know that I can do this with obscure bash and terminal black magic, but I’m familiar with python and it’s a great way to handle stuff. This is something that AI can do and where AI is actually helpful. Of course I could program those scripts myself, but it really is faster.
Current vision models are also awesome, esp. in combination with other technology. There is no reason that the Windows Explorer can’t find all pictures of your dog or every picture you took in London last September or every picture of a hamburger you took.
Features like that would also be awesome in a file explorer. But we are getting crap.
I feel like AI never has useful features like that, just weird little gimmicks.
I’m sure it would be possible to develop an actual AI assistant like that, FOSS of course.
not with LLMs, definitely
That’s why I said AI, not LLM
for example? Because your statement is similar to asking a chef what’s on the menu and them replying with “food”
With current AI I doubt it, at best it would do it 90% and then completely screw up the rest of your files.
I think the prompts that ask to remove telemetry (or to be exact, stuff that try to modify system files) will just give you error. Similar to some current AI models that would just not run when it found some “prohibited” words in prompt.
I love how even this flagship feature is just one more lazy shortcut to another app that bloats the context menu 😅
Context menu bloat was solved in W11 by hiding all those actions you do use behind a “more…” button 🤦♂️ TIHI
