this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
907 points (99.2% liked)

Technology

59542 readers
3198 users here now

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


Our Rules


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

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Who is surprised?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world 30 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Who else has ever invented such a powerful spyware?

Serious question. Because usually Microsoft are not the first ones with anything, it is very likely that there is a predecessor.

Now I am quite disturbed because I don't know how and where we are being spied on already in such an infamous manner!

[–] stankmut@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There is a Mac app called Rewind that came out a couple of years ago that does the same thing. There was also an open source thing for Windows. Everyone is desperate to show that they are hip and can do AI. It looks like someone at Microsoft saw a demo of one of those apps and thought that putting it into Windows would let them brag about how much AI Windows can do. They clearly tried to rush it out in time for their Copilot PC marketing push.

The idea is that you can use local LLM models and image scanning to talk to your computer. You could ask it to summarize your day, ask what you were working on last week, or find those articles you vaguely remember reading last year and can't find anymore. I can almost see the merit, but the security risk is so high.

I wonder if people will eventually stop caring about the security risk of features like this. Those AI girlfriends some people dream about will have access to so much private information. Give this thing a voice and you can market it as a companion who learns the things you like and can talk with you about the things you are reading. Hackers might be able to see literally everything you've done on the computer for the last few years, but you'll get to feel like Iron Man with your own personal Jarvis.

[–] slampisko@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago

I think the average Joe doesn't really understand or care about the security risk of such a feature, because they assume that there are competent people at the company who have considered the security risk and took sufficient steps to address it. It's not by accident that there's a meme about some guy having a smart fridge and watch and everything, and his friend the IT expert, who doesn't have a single piece of smart tech and keeps a gun in the kitchen in case the toaster makes a wrong move...

[–] ABCDE@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago

Vietnam? They have their own browser (CocCoc) and IM application (Zalo).