1645

A PR disaster: Microsoft has lost trust with its users, and Windows Recall is the straw that broke the camel's back (www.windowscentral.com)

submitted 5 months ago by lemmee_in@lemm.ee to c/technology@lemmy.world

482 comments fedilink hide all child comments

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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[-] EnderMB@lemmy.world 38 points 5 months ago

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.

[-] TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world 18 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

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 zero 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?"

[-] octopus_ink@lemmy.ml 11 points 5 months ago

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%.

[-] szczuroarturo@programming.dev 1 points 5 months ago

Wait what has the Amazon done with kindle and ai ?

[-] EnderMB@lemmy.world 1 points 5 months ago

There have been several instances where people have released ebooks that are fully AI generated, and are basically scams with no real content or information.

this post was submitted on 08 Jun 2024

1645 points (97.6% liked)

Technology

59197 readers

1991 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS