Microsoft is putting AI actions into the Windows File Explorer

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.

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.

Some senior exec at Microsoft asked for this.

It's a threat. To your security. To your data. To you in general.

There's this new ai doc you can talk to if you're depressed

I love notepad for deleting all formatting so word doesn't take a massive shit when I paste things into it from other documents.

Wipe Windows, Install Linux ;D That was my last straw as well.

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.

"all your files are now on onedrive."

I feel like AI never has useful features like that, just weird little gimmicks.

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 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.

letting AI do whatever it wants to your files is not very good...

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.

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.

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)

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,

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 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

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.

As long as the feature could be disabled as well

It does appear to be local.

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.

I don't think so. It says it's part of file explorer, so that would be part of the overall system, right?

Context menu bloat was solved in W11 by hiding all those actions you do use behind a "more..." button 🤦‍♂️ TIHI

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.

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.

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.

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".

Are you ever going to elaborate on this lie?

And you'd be correct. I don't need or want any of that crap on my personal machine.

So lemmings = people who want to maintain full control of their PC rather than relinquishing various tasks to a fancy auto-complete?