For a little while now I’ve been keeping an eye on Microsoft and what they’ve been doing with their Windows 11 Operating System, and so far what I’ve seen has concerned me.
AI Integration
Microsoft has invested heavily in OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT and various other LLMs under the ChatGPT family, and have been aggressively pushing Copilot into their operating system to less than stellar outcomes. Thankfully, they seem to be dialing back their changes as of late, though whether this is genuine or simply a response to public outcry remains to be seen.
There was also significant backlash when Microsoft introduced a feature called Recall into their software. Recall takes periodic snapshots of your computer activity, storing everything you’ve done so you can later search back through it, with the help of AI, naturally. From a privacy standpoint this is absolutely horrifying, and earlier versions of Recall didn’t even bother encrypting the plaintext database where all of this information was stored. Encryption was later added, but the fact that this shipped without it in the first place shows a shocking lack of foresight. The entire premise of the feature; a constant, searchable record of everything on your screen is absolutely horrific.
Most bizarrely to me, applications like Notepad, which has remained relatively unchanged since its initial introduction back in 1983, 43 years ago as of writing, have now been given AI integration that does nothing beneficial and is purely there for the sake of it. Paint has received similar treatment.
These are tools people reach for because they’re simple and fast; cluttering them with AI features nobody asked for undermines the entire point of having them.
Microsoft Account Integration
Microsoft have slowly been working Microsoft account authentication into classic software like Notepad and Paint. Software that definitely does not need a login screen; their purpose is to be lightweight applications which serve a very specific use case, and the vast majority of the time whatever you’re working on will be stored locally anyway. If a user has OneDrive connected, just save the contents to the OneDrive folder when navigating File Explorer. There’s no need for any of this.
What makes this rather frustrating is that it feels more like a way to obtain your data dressed up as convenience. Microsoft already has considerable reach into how people use their computers; encouraging or requiring account sign-in for tools as basic as a text editor only extends that reach further. The whole appeal of these tools is their simplicity, and every login prompt or cloud sync nudge chips away at that and increases bloat.
Closing Thoughts
I worry about where Microsoft’s software will end up without significant pushback against all of these so-called “features.” Left to their own devices, I suspect things will only worsen. Windows 10, while far from perfect, was still leaps and bounds ahead of Windows 11 in this regard, there was far less of a push toward AI implementation and tying everything to the Microsoft ecosystem. So far people seem to be pushing back heavily but it needs to continue for Microsoft to get the message that they cannot do this.
Software should be the best it can be without unnecessary additions getting in the way, and to me all of this AI integration does exactly that. It gets in the way of making software simple and great. I’m worried about where this ends up, and I don’t think I’m alone in that.