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.