Microsoft has posted a blog post about detailing its latest round of additions to Windows 11, and as will surely not surprise you, it’s “AI”, all the time, whether you like it or not. I’m not even going to detail most of these “features”, as I’m sure most of them will just become yet another series of checkboxes on whatever debloating tool you prefer. Still, there’s one recurring theme running throughout Microsoft’s recent “AI” marketing that really stands out, and this blog post is no different:
Until now, the power of AI has often been gated behind your skill at prompting. The more context you provide and detail you share, the richer response you receive in return. But typing it out can be tedious and time consuming, especially if it takes multiple tries to get it right.
With 68% of consumers reporting using AI to support their decision making, voice is making this easier.
↫ Yusuf Mehdi at the Windows Blogs
“You’re holding it wrong” has become a recurring meme whenever someone places the blame for a shit product on its users, but we’re really starting to see this line of thinking explode with “AI” tools now. If you’re getting bad, wrong, or downright made up results out of your text generator – which happens all the time – the problem isn’t that the text generator is shit; no, the problem is that the user is shit at manipulating and coercing it into generating the right string of words.
This is a major problem for “AI” companies, as the obtuseness of input and the inevitable shoddiness of results is most likely putting users off using them, and if there’s one thing these companies needs, it’s users. All of them are hemorrhaging money without any realistic paths towards profitability, so there’s a mad scramble to convince and trick people into using “AI” tools, and every single recent effort by Microsoft regarding Windows and Office is 100% geared towards this goal. That’s why nothing is sacred, and everything from Notepad to Paint, from the the Windows Start menu to context menus, from the Explorer file manager to your Windows command line is getting Copilot buttons and sparkly icons: Microsoft has to be able to brag about “AI” user numbers to keep the scam going.
As the bubble gets bigger and bigger, and as we come closer and closer to that satisfying pop, you can expect ever more places in Windows to get “AI” features. I can’t wait for the sparkle icon to show up when formatting a disk, installing a driver through Device Manager, or during a kernel panic. I can’t wait for the blue screen of death to open a Copilot chat that advises you to do something utterly unrelated.
You can do it, Microsoft.
The only thing worse than AI being tied into the OS is that video you posted. What the hell was that?
I think it’s called k-pop or something.
Discovered on my significant other’s phone that a google update rebinds the long press of the power button to their “ai”. Even with gemini “disabled”.
Because people certainly could do with some “ai” when they have to reset the phone.
That’s been a thing for 2+years on Android tablets at my workplace, it would open up their Bixy “assistant”.
This shit has been burned in my mind as my org configures them by hand and I had to disable that shithead on dozens of them.
That and the pushy “create a Samsung account” menu after every major update, where our users call us in panic because they don’t know how to skip that menu (imagine that, they obfuscate the options to skip).
Using voice commands on a PC makes no sense. On smartphones it makes sense if you are using your phone while you are driving but there’s no reason to talk to a PC when using mouse and keyboard is faster.
Of course, but think of the fun you’ll have in a high-density office where wage slaves are packed cheek-by-jowl, all trying to talk to their computers. How long will it take for the office prankster to go around yelling toxic commands over users’ shoulders?
Imagine someone getting fired and yelling “Delete all executive compensation” to the HR demon’s microphone.
The worst part is if MS would stop messing with it and giving it a worse public image it already had, Windows 11 is a rather good OS. Updating from Win10 was a pleasant surprise, the UI overhaul is good, the only thing that make no sense to me is what they did with the start menu. Performance-wise, I didn’t notice a difference, it’s not more resource-hungry. I know there are script that remove most of the crap we don’t want, but I didn’t use one, and it didn’t take long to do it manually. I didn’t use any registry hack.
I’m a musician and whereas things are improving on the Linux side, I still rely on proprietary software and plugins so for now, my options are either Windows or a Mac for my personal workstation.
The taskbar is the worst offender.
What’s wrong with the taskbar?
Thom,
Another day, another AI article. And… I’ll be honest, there is an actual wolf this time.
(But the many other previous ones did not help. Nor the general attitude against the arguably steep learning curve of these tools).
Yes, they should not force half baked things onto customers. They had a good thing going with Windows 10, and they are now welcoming the pilgrims with a broken system. “I’m sure it work great for them” 🙂
“We can’t wait to see what you create, discover and achieve” is just a euphemistic way of saying “We can’t wait to exfiltrate all your data”..
Minuous,
I read that as “we have no idea what to do, maybe you’ll find something useful”. But I don’t think that is any better.