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.
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
Worst part is people will keep using this garbage. The brain rot is so real.
People will always gravitate towards tools that make their lives easier. That’s never gong to change, and is a driving force behind why we have the technology we do now.
That said, this AI shit is clearly not ready for primetime. I do not trust it to have access to my files. Machine learning and LLMs have their place - my phone’s keyboard (FUTO Keyboard) runs a local LLM model that learns my swiping/typing habits and trains the predictive text feature on that data - but that’s a very specialized application, and I have control over it.
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 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
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’d buy that for a dollar.
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!”
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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.
I don’t see it mention it doing anything by itself? This is just an overblown aditional context menu action from inbuilt Windows apps, nothing special. Same thing as “Open Folder in VS Code”.
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man I’m so glad I’ll never use windows again.
this is going to cause so much data loss…
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.
This feels weird. Everything will want to update on any system if you’ve not had it online for 6 months. And the majority of the login requests are going to be your previous credentials being invalidated because they’ve been offline for so long. You’d see similar behavior on Linux.
Applications vanishing isn’t really something that happens on any OS really so I do have to question what you did to cause it. Uninstallers don’t just silently pop off at random. I’ve not even heard anecdotal tellings of that happening previously.
I’ll agree with you on Explorer though. It’s slow as molasses, and I hate utilizing it whenever I have to. It just feels bad.
I guess my point is, complain about Windows itself, and things directly tied into Windows. When you pull out “software I didn’t start for six months wants to update” as your first complaint it doesn’t really help your argument.
The big difference is that updates in Linux happen in the background and aren’t very intrusive. Your hard drive will be used here and there as it unpacks packages but the difference between say, apt, and Windows update is stark. Windows update slows everything down quite a lot.
When you pull out “software I didn’t start for six months wants to update”
Did the software “want” to update or “force” an update? There’s a meaningful difference there and windows often doesn’t give you a choice or do anything else while it’s updating.
“Everything” implies much more than the OS and related Windows updates.
And honestly, Windows forcing updates is a good thing, as has been said time and again. Do you recall the days of Windows XP, where so so many machines were sitting on relatively ancient versions, and exposed to a huge number of vulnerabilities? That is what lead to the current update situation.
And to those that argue that users should be able to manage their own updates, there are numerous ways for a power user to do just that. But the bar for entry is “high” (no UI) to prevent normal end users who will never actually manage their updates from turning them off.
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O.o how long ago was this? I literally just had an issue on a VM where Windows 11 refused to update due to disk space constraints.
This is my personal machine that I own, there is no reason for my operating system to “hide” options from me. If I want to never update my system or delete core operating files that’s my fucking problem to deal with.
You know what else windows hides from normal users? How to disable information tracking, ads, and this AI bullshit.
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.
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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.
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.
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Same. I finally dumped Windows 10 on my gaming PC for LMDE6 a few months ago, and I already see massive benefits. It runs games faster, I can do anything I want with it, including multiple simultaneous user sessions, and can even admin the thing entirely from my phone via Cockpit or plain ol’ SSH (VPN/local network only, of course).
Was arranging a completely unrelated service with a client today and apropos of absolutely nothing he went full jaw-foamingly off his tits about how shite win11 was.
Sweet; can’t wait to try it.
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.
