The first preview version of Android 15 may launch on Thursday, February 15 if a recently discovered developer comment is to be believed.
It was originally posted to Google’s Android Open Source Project website on February 13, although the page hosting the message has since been deleted. If you go to the page right now, you’ll be greeted with an error message. Fortunately, 9To5Google has a screenshot of the comment and it states, in no uncertain terms, that the “first Developer preview is scheduled for Feb 15”. They even refer to it as “Android V” which the publication explains is a reference to the system’s codename, “Vanilla Ice Cream”.
Early Android builds are typically exclusive to Pixel devices and 9To5Google believes this will be the case with the preview. Because it is meant primarily for developers, the build probably won’t see a public release due to software instability. That said, we do expect to see people crack open the preview and spill all of its contents onto the internet, revealing what Android 15 is capable of.
It’s unknown what this early version of the OS will bring; however, we can look at previous reports to give you an idea of what may be arriving.
Features to expect
Back in December 2023, three features were found hidden in the files of a then-recent Android 14 beta that could appear to be for Android 15.
The first one is called Communal Space which lets users add widgets to the lock screen. At the time of the initial report, only Google Calendar, Google Clock, and the main Google App could be added, but we believe there's a good chance more will be supported at launch. The second is the introduction of a battery health percentage read-out akin to what the iPhone 15 has. It’ll offer a crystal clear indication “of how much your phone’s battery has degraded” compared to when it was fresh out of the box.
(Image credit: Mishaal Rahman/Android Authority)
The third feature is called Private Space and, according to Android Police, may be Google’s take on Samsung’s Secure Folder. It hides apps on your smartphone away from prying eyes. This can be especially helpful if you happen to share a device with others.
Then in January, more news came out claiming Android 15 might have a feature allowing users to effortlessly share wireless audio streams. On the surface, it sounds similar to Bluetooth Auracast, a unique form of Bluetooth LE Audio for transmitting content. We wouldn’t be surprised if it was Bluetooth Auracast considering it has yet to be widely adopted by smartphone manufacturers.
(Image credit: Bluetooth SIG)
The last update came in early February revealing Android 15 may soon require all apps on the Google Play Store to support an edge-to-edge mode making it a mandatory setting. The presumed goal here is to better enable full-screen viewing. Edge-to-edge is typically only seen on certain types of apps like video games. Navigation bars and thick black stripes at the top of screens could become a thing of the past as Google establishes a new optimized standard for landscape viewing on Android.
That's currently all we know about Android 15. Hopefully, that one developer's slip-up is just the start of Android 15 reveals. While we have you check out TechRadar's list of the best Android phones for 2024.
Mark Zuckerberg has tried the Apple Vision Pro, and he wants you to know that the Meta Quest 3 is “the better product, period”. This is unsurprising given that his company makes the Quest 3, but having gone through all of his arguments he does have a point – in many respects, the Quest 3 is better than Apple’s high-end model.
In his video posted to Instagram, Zuckerberg starts by highlighting the fact that the Quest 3 offers a more impressive interactive software library than the Vision Pro, and right now that is definitely the case. Yes, the Vision Pro has Fruit Ninja, some other spatial apps (as Apple calls them), and plenty of ported-over iPad apps, but nothing on the Vision Pro comes close to matching the quality or immersion levels of Asgard’s Wrath 2, Walkabout Mini Golf, Resident Evil 4 VR, The Light Brigade, or any of the many amazing Quest 3 VR games.
It also lacks fitness apps. I’m currently testing some for a VR fitness experiment (look out for the results in March) and I’ve fallen in love with working out with my Quest 3 in apps like Supernatural. The Vision Pro not only doesn't offer these kinds of experiences, but its design isn’t suited to them either – the hanging cable could get in the way, and the fabric facial interface would get drenched in sweat; a silicone facial interface is a must-have based on my experience.
The only software area where the Vision Pro takes the lead is video. The Quest platform is badly lacking when it comes to offering the best streaming services in VR – only having YouTube and Xbox Cloud Gaming – and it’s unclear if or when this will change. I asked Meta if it has plans to bring more streaming services to Quest, and I was told by a representative that it has “no additional information to share at this time.”
Zuckerberg also highlights some design issues. The Vision Pro is heavier than the Quest 3, and if you use the cool-looking Solo Knit Band you won’t experience the best comfort or support – instead most Vision Pro testers recommend you use the Dual-Loop band which more closely matches the design of the Quest 3’s default band as it has over the head support.
You also can’t wear glasses with the Vision Pro, instead you need to buy expensive inserts. On Quest 3 you can just extend the headset away from your face using a slider on the facial interface and make room for your specs with no problem.
The Vision Pro being worn with the Dual-Loop band (Image credit: Future)
Then there’s the lack of controllers. On the Vision Pro unless you’re playing a game that supports a controller you have to rely solely on hand tracking. I haven’t used the Vision Pro but every account I’ve read or heard – including Zuckerberg’s – has made it clear that hand-tracking isn’t any more reliable on the Vision Pro than it is on Quest; with the general sentiment being that 95% of the time it works seamlessly which is exactly my experience on the Quest 3.
Controllers are less immersive but do help to improve precision – making activities like VR typing a lot more reliable without needing a real keyboard. What’s more, considering most VR and MR software out there right now is designed for controllers software developers have told us it would be a lot easier to port their creations to the Vision Pro if it had handsets.
Lastly, there’s the value. Every Meta Quest 3 and Apple Vision Pro comparison will bring up price so we won’t labor the point, but there’s a lot to be said for the fact the Meta headset is only $ 499.99 / £479.99 / AU$ 799.99 rather than $ 3,499 (it’s not yet available outside the US). Without a doubt the Quest 3 is giving you way better bang for your buck.
The Vision Pro could be improved if it came with controllers (Image credit: Future)
Vision Pro: not down or out
That said, while Zuckerberg makes some solid arguments he does gloss over how the Vision Pro takes the lead, and even exaggerates how much better the Quest 3 is in some areas – and these aren’t small details either.
The first is mixed reality. Compared to the Meta Quest Pro the Vision Pro is leaps and bounds ahead, though reports from people who have tried the Quest 3 suggest the Vision Pro doesn’t offer as much of an improvement – and in ways it is worse as Zuckerberg mentions.
To illustrate the Quest 3’s passthrough quality Zuckerberg reveals the video of him comparing the two headsets is being recorded using a Quest 3, and it looks pretty good – though having used the headset I can tell you this isn’t representative of what passthrough actually looks like. Probably due to how the video is processed recordings of mixed reality on Quest always look more vibrant and less grainy than experiencing it live.
Based on less biased accounts from people who have used both the Quest 3 and Vision Pro it sounds like the live passthrough feed on Apple’s headset is generally a bit less grainy – though still not perfect – but it does have way worse motion blur when you move your head.
Mixed reality has its pros and cons on both headsets (Image credit: Apple)
Zuckerberg additionally takes aim at the Vision Pro’s displays pointing out that they seem less bright than the Quest 3’s LCDs and they offer a narrower field of view. Both of these points are right, but I feel he’s not given enough credit to two important details.
While he does admit the Vision Pro offers a higher resolution he does so very briefly. The Vision Pro’s dual 3,680 x 3,140-pixel displays will offer a much crisper experience than the Quest 3’s dual 2064 x 2208-pixel screens. Considering you use this screen for everything the advantage of better visuals can’t be understated – and a higher pixel density should also mean the Vision Pro is more immersive as you’ll experience less of a screen door effect (where you see the lines between pixels as the display is so close to your eyes).
Zuckerberg also ignores the fact that the Vision Pro’s screens are OLEDs. Yes, this will mean they’re less vibrant, but the upshot is they offer much better contrast for blacks and dark colors. Better contrast has been shown to improve a user’s immersion in VR based on Meta and other’s experiments so I wouldn’t be surprised if the next Quest headset also incorporated OLEDs – rumors suggest it will and I seriously hope it does.
Lastly, there’s eye-tracking which is something the Quest 3 lacks completely. I don’t think the unavailability of eye-tracking is actually a problem, but that deserves its own article.
This prototype headset showed me how important great contrast is (Image credit: Future)
Regardless of whether you agree with Mark Zuckerberg’s arguments or not one thing that’s clear from the video is that the Vision Pro has got the Meta CEO fired up.
He ends his video stating his desire for the Quest 3 and the Meta’s open model (as opposed to the closed-off walled-garden Apple has where you can only use the headset how it intends) to “win out again” like Windows in the computing space.
But we’ll have to wait and see how it pans out. As Zuckerberg himself admits “The future is not yet written” and only time will tell if Apple, Meta or some new player in the game (like Samsung with its Samsung XR headset) will come out on top in the long run.
Since the explosion in popularity of large language AI models chatbots like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot, many smaller companies have tried to wiggle their way into the scene. Reka, a new AI startup, is gearing up to take on artificial intelligence chatbot giants like Gemini (formerly known as Google Bard) and OpenAI’s ChatGPT – and it may have a fighting chance to actually do so.
The company is spearheaded by Singaporean scientist Yi Tay, working towards Reka Flash, a multilingual language model that has been trained in over 32 languages. Reka Flash also boasts 21 billion parameters, with the company stating that the model could have a competitive edge with Google Gemini Pro and OpenAI’s ChatGPT 3.5 across multiple AI benchmarks.
According to TechInAsia, the company has also released a more compact version of the model called Reka Edge, which offers 7 billion parameters with specific use cases like on-device use. It’s worth noting that ChatGPT and Google Gemini have significantly more training parameters (approximately 175 billion and 137 billion respectively), but those bots have been around for longer and there are benefits to more ‘compact’ AI models; for example, Google has ‘Gemini Nano’, an AI model designed for running on edge devices like smartphones that uses just 1.8 billion parameters – so Reka Edge has it beat there.
So, who’s Yasa?
The model is available to the public in beta on the official Reka site. I’ve had a go at using it and can confirm that it's got a familiar ChatGPT-esque feel to the user interface and the way the bot responds.
The bot introduced itself as Yasa, developed by Reka, and gave me an instant rundown of all the things it could do for me. It had the usual AI tasks down, like general knowledge, sharing jokes or stories, and solving problems.
Interestingly, Yasa noted that it can also assist in translation, and listed 28 languages it can swap between. While my understanding of written Hindi is rudimentary, I did ask Yasa to translate some words and phrases from English to Hindi and from Hindi to English.
I was incredibly impressed not just by the accuracy of the translation, but also by the fact that Yasa broke down its translation to explain not just how it got there, but also breaking down each word in the phrase or sentence and translated it word forward before giving you the complete sentence. The response time for each prompt no matter how long was also very quick. Considering that non-English-language prompts have proven limited in the past with other popular AI chatbots, it’s a solid showing – although it’s not the only multilingual bot out there.
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(Image credit: Future)
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(Image credit: Future)
I tried to figure out how up-to-date the bot was with current events or general knowledge and finally figured out the information. It must have been trained on information that predates the release of the Barbie movie. I know, a weird litmus test, but when I asked it to give me some facts about the pink-tinted Margot Robbie feature it spoke about it as an ‘upcoming movie’ and gave me the release date of July 28, 2023. So, we appear to have the same case as seen with ChatGPT, where its knowledge was previously limited to world events before 2022.
Of all the ChatGPT alternatives I’ve tried since the AI boom, Reka (or should I say, Yasa) is probably the most immediately impressive. While other AI betas feel clunky and sometimes like poor-man’s knockoffs, Reka holds its own not just with its visually pleasing user interfaces and easy-to-use setup, but for its multilingual capabilities and helpful, less robotic personality.
Windows 11 just got a new cumulative update that applies a bunch of security fixes, and makes a small number of changes to the OS, although they include some important tweaks.
The most interesting change here is that Microsoft has decided to give the Copilot button a new home on the taskbar.
Patch KB5034765, which is for both Windows 11 23H2 and 22H2 versions, also applies an important fix for Explorer.exe which is affecting some PCs. This bug can happen when restarting a PC that has a game controller attached, and means that Explorer.exe stops responding – basically, the desktop (File Explorer) locks up, which is obviously bad news.
Microsoft also let us know that a bug that meant announcements from Narrator (the screen reading tool) were coming through too slowly has been remedied (when using natural voices with Narrator, that is).
Analysis: Don’t expect Copilot relocation right away
As mentioned, there’s the usual raft of security patches with this new update, which are important to apply to keep your Windows 11 PC fully secure.
The big change is the shift for the Copilot button, with it being ushered along the taskbar to the system tray area as mentioned. Why do this? The reasoning is that the Copilot panel is over on the right, so having its button just below where the UI appears makes sense, which is fair enough.
Remember that those who don’t want a Copilot button can drop it from the taskbar, anyway (and folks who want to go further than that and strip out the AI entirely from Windows 11 can do so – kind of, though we wouldn’t recommend it).
Note that not everyone will get this repositioning of Copilot straight away, as Microsoft notes that Windows 11 PCs will get this tweak at different times. In other words, this is another gradual rollout, so it may be some time yet before Copilot shuffles over onto the right of your taskbar – but rest assured, it’ll happen.
While we’re always somewhat cautious around any new update, at least for the first couple of days after it debuts, thus far it seems there are no known issues being reported with KB5034765 (on the likes of Reddit). So far, so good, then, and hopefully the mentioned bug fixes don’t come with any unintended side effects elsewhere in the OS.
A new beta version of macOS Sonoma 14.4 has just been made available for the public, allowing Mac users to get an early look into what the new update may entail in its final form – as well as getting to try out some of the new features and fixes.
Among the regular refinements and bug fixes we normally see with most small software updates like this, macOS Sonoma 14.4 also offers new emoji characters! The new emojis include a melting face (perfect for a hot day – or a response to bad news on a particularly slow work day), two hands making a little heart, and a moose, amongst others.
The fixes address some issues reported by testers and developers from the first public beta, which include potential issues with Safari and Messages. I’ve been running on the previous public beta version, and I’ve noticed issues with my messages not syncing between my iPhone 15 and Mac Mini, and since downloading the beta I’ve noticed some improvements with getting notifications and syncing message threads, which is good news for anyone else currently experiencing that issue.
Want to give it a go yourself? Here’s how
If you’d like to download the public beta of macOS Sonoma 14.4 yourself and give it a go, you can sign up for access straight from your device's settings menu. You can access the public beta by heading over to your System Settings, going to the software update page ‘General’ section of the menu, and clicking on the option labeled ‘Beta updates’.
Once you do that, a small pop-up will appear to let you decide between enabling developer or public beta updates. We would recommend not selecting the developer option if you’re a regular user planning to try it on your personal Mac or Macbook because beta updates in general can be quite unstable and are not really intended for everyday use – and the developer-targeted version is liable to have even more bugs.
Plus, compared to the public beta versions of updates, developer versions are likely to have features or changes that might never be made available to the public in the long run. Instead, if you enable the public beta of Sonoma 14.4 you can get an early look at features that are more likely to be part of an actual public release.
ChatGPT is becoming more like your most trusted assistant, remembering not just what you've told it about yourself, your interests, and preferences, but applying those memories in future chats. It's a seemingly small change that may make the generative AI appear more human and, perhaps, pave the way for General AI, which is where an AI brain can operate more like the gray matter in your head.
OpenAI announced the limited test in a blog post on Tuesday, explaining that it's testing the ability of ChatGPT (in both the free version and ChatGPT Plus) to remember what you tell it across all chats.
ChatGPT can with this update remember casually, just picking up interesting bits along the way, like my preference for peanut butter on cinnamon raisin bagels, or what you explicitly tell it to remember.
The benefit of ChatGPT having a memory is that new conversations with ChatGPT no longer start from scratch. A fresh prompt could have, for the AI, implied context. A ChatGPT with memory becomes more like a useful assistant who knows how you like your coffee in the morning or that you never want to schedule meetings before 10 AM.
In practice, OpenAI says that the memory will be applied to future prompts. If you tell ChatGPT that you have a three-year-old who loves giraffes, subsequent birthday card ideation chats might result in card ideas featuring a giraffe.
ChatGPT won't simply parrot back its recollections of your likes and interests, but will instead use that information to work more efficiently for you.
It can remember
Some might find an AI that can remember multiple conversations and use that information to help you a bit off-putting. That's probably why OpenAI is letting people easily opt out of the memories by using the “Temporary Chat” mode, which will seem like you're introducing a bit of amnesia to ChatGPT.
Similar to how you can remove Internet history from your browser, ChatGPT will let you go into settings to remove memories (I like to think of this as targeted brain surgery) or you can conversationally tell ChatGPT to forget something.
For now, this is a test among some free and ChatGPT Plus users but OpenAI offered no timeline for when it will roll out ChatGPT memories to all users. I didn't find the feature live in either my free ChatGPT or Plus subscription.
OpenAI is also adding Memory capabilities to its new app-like GPTs, which means developers can build the capability into bespoke chatty AIs. Those developers will not be able to access memories stored within the GPT.
Too human?
An AI with long-term memory is a dicier proposition than one that has a transient, at best, recall of previous conversations. There are, naturally, privacy implications. If ChatGPT is randomly memorizing what it considers interesting or relevant bits about you, do you have to worry about your details appearing in someone else's ChatGPT conversations? Probably not. OpenAI promises that memories will be excluded from ChatGPT's training data.
OpenAI adds in its blog, “We're taking steps to assess and mitigate biases, and steer ChatGPT away from proactively remembering sensitive information, like your health details – unless you explicitly ask it to.” That might help but ChatGPT must understand the difference between useful and sensitive info, a line that might not always be clear.
This update could ultimately have significant implications. ChatGPT can in prompt-driven conversations already seem somewhat human, but its hallucinations and fuzzy memories about, sometimes, even how the conversation started make it clear that more than a few billion neurons still separate us.
Memories, especially information delivered casually back to you throughout ChatGPT conversations, could change that perception. Our relationships with other people are driven in large part by our shared experiences and memories of them. We use them to craft our interactions and discussions. It's how we connect. Surely, we'll end up feeling more connected to a ChatGPT that can remember our distaste of spicy food and our love of all things Rocky Balboa.
Nvidia is offering users the opportunity to try out their new AI chatbot that runs natively on your PC called Chat with RTX.
Well, it’s not a chatbot in the traditional sense like ChatGPT. It’s more of an AI summarizer as Chat with RTX doesn’t come with its own knowledge base. The data it references has to come from documents that you provide. According to the company, their software supports multiple file formats including .txt, .pdf, .doc, and .xml. The way it works is you upload a single file or an entire folder onto Chat with RTX’s library. You then ask questions relating to the uploaded content or have it sum up the text into a bize-sized paragraph.
As TheVerge points out, the tool can help professionals analyze lengthy documents. And because it runs locally on your PC, you can ask Chat with RTX to process sensitive data without worrying about any potential leaks.
The software can also summarize YouTube videos. To do this, you’ll need to first change the dataset from Folder Path to YouTube URL then paste said URL of the clip into Chat with RTX. It’ll then transcribe the entire video for the app to use as its knowledge base. URLs for YouTube playlists can be pasted as well. You can also list out how many videos are in the playlist. Regardless, the software will transcribe everything as normal.
Rough around the edges
Keep in mind Chat with RTX is far from perfect. As TheVerge puts it, “the app is a little rough around the edges”.
It’s reportedly pretty good at summarizing documents since it had “no problem pulling out all the key information.” However, it falters with YouTube videos. The publication uploaded one of their clips for Chat with RTX to transcribe. After looking through the summary, they discovered it was for a completely different video. Additionally, it doesn’t understand context. If you ask a follow-up question “based on the context of a previous question,” the AI won’t know what you’re talking about. Each prompt must be treated as a completely new one.
Requirements
The demo is free for everyone to try out, although your computer must meet certain requirements. It needs to have a GeForce RTX 30 Series or higher graphics card running on the latest Nvidia drivers, at least 8GB of VRAM, and Windows 10 or Windows 11 on board.
TheVerge claims it took about 30 minutes for Chat with RTX to finish installing on their PC which housed an Intel Core i9-14900K CPU and a GeForce RTX 4090 GPU. So even if you have a powerful machine, it’ll still take a while. The file size for the app is nearly 40GB and will eat up around 3GB of RAM when activated.
We reached out to Nvidia asking if there are plans to expand support to RTX 20 Series graphics cards and when the final version will launch (assuming there is one). This story will be updated at a later time.
Apple won't be forced to open up iMessage to rival messaging services, after the European Commission decided that the app – alongside Microsoft's Bing and Edge –won't be subject to tough new EU regulations. And Google isn't particularly happy about the decision.
Bloomberg (via BGR) reported that the inbound Digital Markets Act (DMA), which comes into play in March 2024, will not affect Apple’s messaging platform, nor Microsoft’s Bing search engine or Edge browser, as none of the services hold enough share in their respective markets.
In short, after a probe which went on for five months, the European Commission has concluded that these digital properties simply aren’t a dominant enough presence to require regulation, and therefore they’re flying under the radar of the DMA.
Unsurprisingly, Apple and Microsoft welcomed the announcement from the European Commission. Ducking the regulation obviously means avoiding headaches around compliance with the DMA, and these apps can carry on as they were with no interference.
(Image credit: Apple)
But Google, which has been calling on the EU to make Apple's iMessage play fair with Android phones, is less happy with the decision. A Google spokesperson told us that “excluding these popular services from DMA rules means consumers and businesses won’t be offered the breadth of choice that already exists on other, more open platforms”.
Apple has previously said that it will support RCS messages from Android phones in 2024, a compromise that seems to have worked in its favor with this European Commission decision. But Google and others clearly wanted EU regulations to go further.
The Coalition for Open Digital Ecosystems (CODE), a group that Google helped to set up with Meta, Qualcomm and several other tech giants, also stated that “today’s surprising decision undermines the objectives of the DMA, as well as its potential to improve choice and contestability for all Europeans.”
Analysis: A good decision for consumers?
(Image credit: Apple Inc)
So, is this a good thing, a bad thing? Perhaps the best place to start is asking: what’s the aim of the DMA itself?
The Digital Markets Act is all about ensuring that digital markets are “fair and open” to all-comers. To do this, it intends to regulate so-called “gatekeepers” or large online platforms, providing stipulations to adhere to, and various dos and don’ts for them.
A key part of this is ensuring interoperability with the gatekeeper’s own service, free access to data pertaining to the service, and a whole gamut of regulation, frankly – including preventing companies from prohibiting uninstallation of an app.
After this ruling, none of this will apply to iMessage, Edge or Bing. This isn’t really a great surprise in the case of iMessage, to be fair, because while it’s big in the US, most folks use WhatsApp in Europe, and iMessage isn’t actually all that popular (relatively speaking).
Therefore, iMessage isn't regarded as a gatekeeper, and thus not subject to the regulations. The same is true of Bing and Edge, which are still leagues behind Google and Chrome for market share. Incidentally, if you were wondering, WhatsApp will be regulated under the DMA.
(Image credit: Shutterstock / DenPhotos)
If you think Apple is getting a free pass with the DMA, though, think again. As you may have seen recently, the company is being forced to make some major changes to its mobile operating system.
iOS 17.4 will show you more prominent options for choosing your default browser and will let you download from alternative app stores (not just Apple’s own ecosystem), for starters – which is all huge, of course.
So, while these individual apps – iMessage, Bing, and Edge – won’t fall under the regulating hammer of the DMA, Apple and Microsoft’s widely-used operating systems most certainly do.
There’s another specter on the horizon for iMessage, though, and that’s the possibility that this kind of regulation may be passed in the US, where Apple’s messaging app does have a big presence.
Furthermore, there’s already mounting pressure from rival browser makers who aren’t happy about the way Apple has dealt with the DMA here, allowing for the aforementioned greater choice and freedom in iOS, but only in Europe – which means that those browser developers must juggle two different versions of their clients for Apple’s mobiles, not just one.
Google explained that it’s standard practice for human annotators to read, label, and process conversations that users have with Gemini. This information and data are used to improve Gemini to make it perform better in future conversations with users. It does clarify that conversations are “disconnected” from specific Google accounts before being seen by reviewers, but also that they’re stored for up to three years, with “related data” like user devices and languages as well as location. According to TechCrunch, Google doesn’t make it clear if these are in-house annotators or outsourced from elsewhere.
If you’re feeling some discomfort about relinquishing this sort of data to be able to use Gemini, Google will give users some control over how and which Gemini-related data is retained. You can turn off Gemini App Activity in the My Activity dashboard (which is turned on by default). Turning off this setting will stop Gemini from saving conversations in the long term, starting when you disable this setting.
However, even if you do this, Google will save conversations associated with your account for up to 72 hours. You can also go in and delete individual prompts and conversations in the Gemini Apps Activity screen (although again, it’s unclear if this fully scrubs them from Google's records).
A direct warning that's worth heeding
Google puts the following in bold for this reason – your conversations with Gemini are not just your own:
Please don’t enter confidential information in your conversations or any data you wouldn’t want a reviewer to see or Google to use to improve our products, services, and machine-learning technologies.
Google’s AI policies regarding data collection and retention are in line with its AI competitors like OpenAI. OpenAI’s policy for the standard, free tier of ChatGPT is to save all conversations for 30 days unless a user is subscribed to the enterprise-tier plan and chooses a custom data retention policy.
Google and its competitors are navigating what is one of the most contentious aspects of generative AI – the issues raised and the necessity of user data that comes with the nature of developing and training AI models. So far, it’s been something of a Wild West when it comes to the ethics, morals, and legality of AI.
That said, some governments and regulators have started to take notice, for example, the FTC in the US and the Italian Data Protection Authority. Now’s a good time as ever for tech organizations and generative AI makers to pay attention and be proactive. We know they already do this when it comes to their corporate-orientated, paid customer models as those AI products very explicitly don’t retain data. Right now, tech companies don’t feel they need to do this for free individual users (or to at least give them the option to opt-out), so until they do, they’ll probably continue to scoop up all of the conversational data they can.
Debloating Windows is quite the tradition among some users, and there are apps out there to make this task easier – and a new version of an existing client takes things further with the ability to strip out AI functionality from Windows 11 (and Windows 10, which also has Copilot).
This is BloatyNosy, an app that has been around for quite some time (it was previously known as ThisIsWin11). Now, there’s a fresh incarnation: BloatyNosyAI.
It’s the first version of the new take on the app – still in preview, officially – and the idea is that it can help ditch AI features from Windows 11.
BloatynosyAI 2.0 is available as a preview 🫥🤓https://t.co/eK2UK0Ydni#Microsoft #Windows11 #Windows12 #AI #Copilot #Bloatynosy pic.twitter.com/b63W93CmBVFebruary 12, 2024
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Neowin spotted the launch and tried out BloatyNosyAI, which is handy as the app itself doesn’t make it clear exactly what it can do in terms of Windows 11 AI extraction on its GitHub page.
All the developer, Belim, observes is that the app offers the “ability to remove AI features in Windows” and that: “Plugins can be accessed, for example, via the keyword ‘Plugin’ or ‘AI’ to remove AI in Windows 11/10.”
Neowin tried those keywords – note that the app itself is AI-powered (ironically), which is what the name refers to, as well as debloating AI – and discovered options to remove the Copilot button from the taskbar, or to remove AI from the Edge browser.
The overall philosophy of BloatyNosy is suggested by the name; it’s not just about removing bloat from Windows and speeding it up a touch, but also tweaking privacy settings to combat Microsoft’s ‘nosier’ measures in the OS.
Analysis: Caution first
As already observed, we’d recommend being cautious with this one. It’s interesting to see the new angle and version of BloatyNosy here, but it is still a preview, and this kind of software can have unintended side effects. We’d avoid installing a preview update from Microsoft for Windows 11, let alone a third-party app, just because you never quite know what might go wrong with code that’s still in testing.
Especially when it’s messing around with the internals of Windows 11 (or Windows 10) and stripping out features.
It is, of course, possible to remove Copilot yourself as Neowin pointed out, but that involves fiddling around with the Registry, which is not a recommended pursuit for anyone except the highly tech-savvy.
There are measures you can take to minimize the appearance of Copilot in Windows 11, mind – such as turning off the taskbar icon for the AI, so at least you won’t see it. (Even if that’s hardly the same as removing the assistant from your desktop – or indeed your keyboard where it could set up home in the future).
For now, we’d treat this app purely as an emerging sign of the interest in banishing Copilot from Windows 11, as not everyone wants AI on their PC. Whether Microsoft itself will ever offer an option to strip out Copilot from Windows 11 completely (only available via a Registry hack currently, as mentioned), well, put it this way: we wouldn’t bank on it.
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