this post was submitted on 20 May 2025
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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.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 3 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 25 points 3 days ago (2 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 3 days ago
[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 days ago (1 children)

this is going to cause so much data loss...

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (3 children)

If it ran with local model(s), as in, ran on your PC entirely, I would have no problem with this.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 days ago (1 children)

As long as the feature could be disabled as well

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm so glad I've been moving away from windows recently

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

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).

[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Every single story about windows 11 makes me hope I can convince IT to let me migrate my work laptop to linux before October.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

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.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 days ago

I'm sure they will. It's Microsoft, so I'd expect nothing less than that.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 days ago (10 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Worst part is people will keep using this garbage. The brain rot is so real.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 days ago (1 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 days ago (2 children)

"Users throw windows in trash and install linux" - new headline

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago

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.

Only one of those things could be called AI.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 days ago

Microsoft will have AI tracking everything I do and taking screenshots as well. Just what I have been asking for. /s

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