Microsoft is putting AI actions into the Windows File Explorer
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.
https://www.theverge.com/news/670251/microsoft-windows-11-ai-actions-file-explorer-context-menuOpen linkView original on sh.itjust.works437
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
There's this new ai doc you can talk to if you're depressed
Today I had to disable Copilot in Notepad.
Notepad.
The shitty word editor that you use to jot down your shitty writing before copypasting it into somewhere else to put actual work into it.
You’re telling me I can’t change the shitty line-spacing in shitty Notepad, but I can get a top-of-the-line corporate LLM to help me with my purposely shitty writing?
#keepnotepadshitty
I love notepad for deleting all formatting so word doesn't take a massive shit when I paste things into it from other documents.
PowerToys -> Ctr alt v
And a ton of other utils
Does pasting without formatting have the same effect or is it still slightly off?
Same effect
Wipe Windows, Install Linux ;D That was my last straw as well.
Hell yeah. I run LMDE6 on my gaming PC. Runs fucking fantastic, even plays games faster via Proton than it did on Windows natively.
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
You know it's funny that Microsoft took this feature from Apple from macOS. But here's the thing right? This shit requires a super computer npu to run and meanwhile my 2012 MacBook Pro with a core i5 3rd gen running opencore legacy patcher can just do this stuff in the exact same way. For the features one would actually wanna use this for.
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.
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.
With current AI I doubt it, at best it would do it 90% and then completely screw up the rest of your files.
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"
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!"
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.
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'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.
Someday... 🥹
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.
Wine or Proton will make just bout anything you run on windows run.
What networking program? If it's not some proprietary protocol I bet there is a Linux tool that does it.
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.
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.
and you'd be wrong
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
Well, you either switch and learn to use compatible software or you can keep complaining about enshittification for the rest of your life.
might be difficult for the layperson to agree to that,
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.
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.
My company is "fully Microsoft".. fuck me
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.
man I'm so glad I'll never use windows again.
Yeah I'm glad i chose Mint instead of Win11
If it ran with local model(s), as in, ran on your PC entirely, I would have no problem with this.
As long as the feature could be disabled as well
That too
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
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 even 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.
this is going to cause so much data loss...
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.
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".
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.
"Users throw windows in trash and install linux" - new headline
Yep I only have windows for pubg and vr...I really hope vr on linux gets some more advances cuz I do enjoy it
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).
Microsoft will have AI tracking everything I do and taking screenshots as well. Just what I have been asking for. /s
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.
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?
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.
I'm not really talking about LLMs or ML in general. I'm talking about capitalism and enshitification.
I use LLMs every day from the comfort of my Linux systems.
No they're not because I'm on Linux
Enjoy...Oh wait I have to fix these
Windows 11 doesn't even have a working file manager or text editor anymore. This is not a serious operating system.
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.
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.
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".
Narrator:
They couldn't.
Are you ever going to elaborate on this lie?
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?
That's called MS Paint. It already exists.
No! Why would I want more shit calling back to the mothership about my files on my personal computer?
When did I ever say that?
MS Paint doesn’t give you advanced features like background blurring/removal and object removal.
They’re not “calling back to the mothership”. Why do you think they are?
By being against them adding these features.
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.
LMAO
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.
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?