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.
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.