It’s a nightmare scenario for Microsoft. The headlining feature of its new Copilot+ PC initiative, which is supposed to drive millions of PC sales over the next couple of years, is under significant fire for being what many say is a major breach of privacy and security on Windows. That feature in question is Windows Recall, a new AI tool designed to remember everything you do on Windows. The feature that we never asked and never wanted it.
Microsoft, has done a lot to degrade the Windows user experience over the last few years. Everything from obtrusive advertisements to full-screen popups, ignoring app defaults, forcing a Microsoft Account, and more have eroded the trust relationship between Windows users and Microsoft.
It’s no surprise that users are already assuming that Microsoft will eventually end up collecting that data and using it to shape advertisements for you. That really would be a huge invasion of privacy, and people fully expect Microsoft to do it, and it’s those bad Windows practices that have led people to this conclusion.
Outside of the “Microsoft bad” comments, this is a prime example of why big tech companies need to stop promoting AI leads to a position where they are able to have influence over initiatives outside of AI.
The worst thing to happen to basically every product/service in tech right now is AI. It’s made Google unreliable in the eyes of normal people for the first time in decades, it’s destroying trust in Amazon content across reviews and Kindle, it’s adding features to Facebook that no one ever wanted, etc.
And the annoying thing is, this tech can be exceptionally useful when it’s actually been implemented thoughtfully.
Effortlessly cleaning up audio recordings using AI tooling is incredible, for example. There are audio recordings that I’ve been able to make sound great that previously would’ve required me to make some calls and ask for a bunch of re-recordings and added days of delays to a project.
AI in image recognition to vastly speed up medical imaging diagnosis, or analysing lab work? Amazing. Asking unpaid medical students to laboriously pore over thousands of images sounds like a nightmare.
Better offline translation? Sign me the fuck up.
Image description for the visually impaired, like my sister? Genuinely life changing. A lot of content online isn’t properly tagged, or has much attention placed on accessibility.
The list goes on. Unfortunately, with big tech being as they are, their first thoughts turn to “which implementations of AI will aid us the most in scraping userdata and showing ads?”
Don’t forget making sure the peons can squeeze out more productivity for the 1%.