Microsoft introduces AI meddling to your files with Copilot in OneDrive Microsoft is to overhaul OneDrive in a move that will bring Copilot to the cloud storage service and herd users towards the tool's web interface. In a presentation that combined both consumer and business editions of OneDrive, Microsoft was keen to show off OneDrive Home – the experience to be enjoyed by users of the the …
I had a bunch of wiki pages with instructions for disabling OneDrive and for those of us for whom there was no hope of data recovery, or ever getting thing to stop screwing with your files, I ran an emotional support group called Victims of OneDrive.
I believe having AI to blame, might help some of our newer Victims Of OneDrive come to terms with their loss.
Microsoft sent me notice just this morning that if I didn't login again on my OneDrive account that they would freeze it and my files might disappear. One would expect them to take the hint after two years of non-use that I didn't care to participate in their file manipulation scheme and won't be using it again. This AI thing makes me determined to keep it that way.
How can there be more lock in for "productivity" users? What other OS or productivity suite will they turn to - WordPerfect? Libre Office? They might work, but what big corporation is going to take a punt?
See it for what it is: Nothing more than AI/ML mumbo-jumbo to be uttered by big wigs at quarterly investor briefings - it's well believed amongst big companies that simply mentioning AI boosts your share price, and given the oustandingly poor judgement of many investors it's probably true.
I have a friend whose approach to (cough) torrenting films is to go purely by filesize. “This one is really high quality! It’s over 15GB in size!” (said of a file that is basically a lossless-compression 4K recording of someone pointing a VHS camcorder at a TV screen that is showing a flip-phone recording of a movie taken from the back row of the cinema, complete with the back of people’s heads and plenty of coughing).
In the same way, I’m sure there are CIOs out there who weigh up competing software options purely on the basis of how long the feature lists for each are. “Yes I know the IT dept say our employees only need basic document editing and email, but this office suite has AI! And blockchain! And a ‘new improved UX’ whatever that is!!”
"They might work, but what big corporation is going to take a punt?"
Apple did. In doing so, they proved that having an effective monopoly and giving away a free quality alternative isn't sufficient to gain traction against MS Office. To me that suggests MS Office might not be winning due to antics so much as it's the best option for most people.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that it’s the best option, but rather the canonical option. Office is openly hostile to its users and in classic MS fashion, refuses to commit to modernizing. We’re 40 years on from word processors being standard office kit, but Word still employs elements of its interface that would be more at home on a Selectric.
The problem is that the actual rendering of the page is entirely proprietary to MS, so if you’re expected to produce a docx instead of a pdf, you can only guarantee uniformity if you put up with Word.
First thought: How do we turn them off or use third party software to disable them?
If it's the CoPilot adverts that get jammed into the top of emails that contain any non-domain adresses, you can't.
Yes, we've complained to Microsoft. They didn't even bother sending us a boiler-plate response.
"Inevitably, Copilot skills are due to arrive in OneDrive. Microsoft hopes these will help users find files and stay organized."
How the hell do they think we've managed all this time without it??? Making a directory and saving files in it is too difficult now?
Users are either organised or they aren't. Most seem capable of storing their stuff in sane sensible places, and manage quite well. Can't see copilot helping them much. Others, well.... words fail me.
One of my clients understands the idea of files and directories, but practical application of same eludes him. He has files in his documents folder (and sub folders) but also in his downloads, where they are deposited when he opens attachments. The fact that file open/ save dialogs remember where he last was in the tree is a source of constant mystery. No amount of copiloting is going to fix him. Yet, bizarrely, his emails are all neatly filed in appropriate folders. I suspect that's because they stay where he puts them, without the view changing.
Then there is the photographer who had just about every image he'd ever shot all stored in one folder until explorer couldn't cope anymore. Took me hours to sort that out.
Or the guy who stored important documents in recycle bin, so he could find them.
It's just as well that artificial intelligence isn't - a few hours dealing with users like that would have it needing counseling.
“How the hell do they think we've managed all this time without it??? Making a directory and saving files in it is too difficult now?”
Oh now come on, just how many nights have you laid awake, unable to sleep, haunted by the thought of “I don’t know how to find my files?”
Oh no wait, hang on, that’s all just compete bullshit isn’t it?
I recall (back in 1997 when a new JV was being set up by a number of large multi-nationals to rationalise supplier management) the IT manager (a senior IT manager seconded from one of the JV parties) suggested dispensing with a directory structure for shared files - just use the WinNT search function to find the one you want. We (the engineers who would be using the system refused and set up a file structure that would work for us. And it did work for us until the General Manager decided to come into the office one weekend to restructure it to make more sense to him - which broke all the shortcuts we had set up. A deputation on the Monday morning left him in no doubt that we were going to revert to the previous structure and to keep his paws out!
I'm not against flat file for some situations - for example, I prefer a wiki approach to corporate lessons learned databases as it allows the users to link as appropriate to them (and to evolve as lessons are learnt), rather that starting with a structure that only made sense to the system designer.
As others have said, MS had better provide an easy way to with off AI, or I'll abandon it (which might be a good way to cut down on how much storage people actually use with their 365 accounts, saving MS money)!
You're missing the fact that Microsoft has been making it deliberately difficult to actually know where your files are stored.
When it was <drive>:\<directory>\<file> then you knew. When Microsoft started creating libraries, and even libraries that could span multiple locations, you started losing that certainty. When they started introducing cloud storage and OneDrive it's now almost impossible to know with any certainty where a file is stored (my view is that this was mostly so that MS can make decisions for you to store data in their cloud rather than anywhere else, so they can use it for training their LLM AIs).
So, what's their solution? Use this to justify even more more AI to guess what files you will need so you don't have to worry about finding a file yourself (and so they have a reason to look in your files). Until you have a need to justify finding a file, and you can't.
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"Surfaces"?
Not "lists" or "describes", but "surfaces".
> Microsoft floated the new design
Well, that just makes this interpretation oficial:
Files, long forgotten by their authors, bloated, old and wrinkled, surface and bob about on your web page.
The page provides a boathook tool to interact with these files, so you can hook and drag them into your area or poke them with the spike, then watch as they sink out of sight beyond the bottom of the page, leaving behind nothing but a trail of noxious bubbles[1].
[1] if you choose this option, it is recommended not to be wearing headphones.
THere is too Much Interferance by Microsoft in Office and Win11.
S far I have turned off CoPilot and I far as we can see we DONT want C0poliot on oyr computer systems of Office suires.
There is already Menues that have been added to Office 356 suit ("Comment, Eddit, Share") that we cant remove or take off and unless Microsoft remove these we will be looking ate another Office suite and goodbye Office 365.
I don't believe Microsoft has any AI technology whatsover. If it did, surely it would deploy it to filter out the dozens of spam emails which arrive in my Outlook account each day, all of which are so blatantly obvious that any system with the IQ of a retarded amoeba would spot them immediately.
A few advantages, mostly for the provider.
Lots of less visible drawbacks, mostly for the end user.
Hypeable+++
Model training data source+++
Product features++
C-suite salaries+
Cost-
Complexity--
Confidentiality---
Energy efficiency---
Security---
Reliability???
(Not to worry, it's Microsoft!)
There is a time and a place for cloud storage – as long as it's not your only storage and is just used as a backup (one of at least two, preferably three). And I would argue that your desktop is probably as likely (if not more likely) to be hacked as MS's servers. That said, I really don't want or need Copilot doing anything at all with my files. I just want it to store them for me: I'll do the rest, thank you.
"It is already possible to use desktop synchronization to keep some files always available and others in the cloud. Microsoft intends to bring this functionality to the browser and permit users to select files or folders to always be available locally via OneDrive for the Web."
What are the chances that this will only work in Edge?
"Inevitably, Copilot skills are due to arrive in OneDrive. Microsoft hopes these will help users find files and stay organized."
Hold on...
"Inevitably, Copilot skills are due to arrive in OneDrive. Microsoft hopes these will help Microsoft sift, search and exploit user's data and files far more efficiently."
There, fixed that for you!
Steering users to a web-interface for file access? Allowing selection of which files are always sync'ed for offline use? Sounds like MS has gone cherry picking through open-source apps for its new "amazing" features....
One-Drive? The privacy policy for that thing is a nightmare? (yes, I do select "e-mail privacy policy" so I can read them) Far to much gray about the rights MS grants itself and "third-party" associates over your files. "HowTo" disable One-Drive has been a perpetual moving target - keep your favorite links current. On last glance at the official OD howto, I did find an odd surprise. The MS support page suggested removing OD altogether -- really? I guess that's one way to steer users to a "new" OD web/browser-interface.
Easiest way to make sure OD is off by default - configure the install to login with a "local account". Never a MS account.
Gone are the days of looking forward to new features in Windows. Over the past decade, new features seem primarily to be good for MS, not the user. (How do you like to targeted ads popping up in Win 11?) Nowadays, reports of new features from MS are more cringe inducing events than an expectations of something useful. If MS would only learn the basic axiom "A New Feature to One is a Bug to Another if it can't be TURNED OFF".
MS's AI playing with my files certainly falls at the cringe-inducing end of the updates scale. Let's play hide-n-seek with the uses files by shuffling them into multiple colored folders. A mix of reds and oranges and yellows and greens should really help the color-blind users out. Never mind the shuffled files were necessary to existing batch or windows script host files. What could possibly go wrong....
Can I suggest Mega, which is an end-to-end encrypted file storage service, similar to OneDrive and which works natively on Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS?
No meddling with or snooping on your files by the provider. I seriously don't understand why the entire population isn't using it and instead bothers with insecure offerings like OneDrive or DropBox. They already have 240 million users, but that's only a fraction of the userbase of OneDrive and DropBox if you ask me. People need to be educated about this.
https://mega.io/
"It is already possible to use desktop synchronization to keep some files always available and others in the cloud"
Anyone actually use this feature? Is it any good? I've stayed away from MS sync features since getting badly burned many years ago.
The tech might be better now, but OTOH, Windows still gets confused if I open a .xlsx file from a file share while my laptop is docked and then do something exotic like undock (moving from Ethernet to WiFi) and then try to edit and save the file.
I was having a chat with a fellow dev about Stable Diffusion and we got talking about a demo to multiple people over Zoom.
The thing is, Stable Diffusion can sometimes randomly result in some very NSFW results.
There's different types of NSFW - not all is pron related.
I can easily see AI suggestions in screen shares during live demo's going all sorts of wrong.
Perhaps the presenter had some chats on Teams about sensitive work related stuff and somehow, that ends up in the mix.
We all have seen gaffs that are just human error - the person sharing the screen forgets to close a private chat window, or doesn't close it down and a message popup appears "Yeah, I agree, Mandy has amazing tits!"
I can see AI causing all sorts of issues like this - bringing up suggestions based on private data that isn't flagged correctly.
"Suggestions based on "everyone knows Eric is a total dickwad:""
"Here's some results for "We all know the boss is shagging his PA, even his wife does:""
And there you are, sharing your screen in a meeting, with that AI generated content just waiting to trip you up.
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