Hello there Windows Central readers. How are you doing today?
Some of you may have noticed that we have a shiny new comment system here at Windows Central. We have a more formal announcement about that coming soon, but before then, I thought I’d indulge in a bit of an experiment, if you would permit me.
Whether you’re on mobile or on desktop, you should be able to hit “Sign In” at the top there, giving you access to our new comment system. This gives you access to notifications for replies to your comments, as well as information on hot on-going comments and discussions. Previously, our comment system fed through the forum, which came with a lot of problems of its own. This new system is a lot more modern and user friendly, and a little less aggressive with 2FA requests, keeping you signed in for longer.
To that end, I wanted to explore semi-regular topic discussions here in the comment system below, inspired by the things you’re talking about across social media and beyond. Eventually these could evolve to include polls, giveaways, and your topic suggestions too. But, let’s keep it simple for the time being.
To start things off, I want to ask you something …
Although I am on vacation this week, I have been checking in on discussions around the internet, as well as keeping up with the latest Windows 11 and Xbox news.
Last week, Microsoft unveiled Muse AI, which is Xbox’s first real foray into gaming-oriented AI. Microsoft says the features will generally revolve around concepting and the like, and demonstrated how a large language model trained on the mothballed game Bleeding Edge could effectively simulate an experience, in real time, based on what it learned about how the game should play. It was a pretty impressive demo, and reminded me of those scary Will Smith AI spaghetti videos from years ago. It’s not hard to extrapolate how the technology will improve over time, but either way, the reactions to the tech perhaps became the real story after the fact.
Games media, content creators, and commenters alike have reacted pretty negatively to Muse AI so far, as to be expected somewhat. Some developers offered comments to various outlets deriding “AI slop” and the system’s potential to reduce jobs in the creative space. Microsoft says these types of tools will be “additive” in nature and support existing workers to do more, but corporations tend to say a lot of things …
It got me to thinking about how I use AI in my job. Generally speaking, I don’t. We don’t use AI to write content here at Windows Central … primarily because the tools simply aren’t good enough yet. If I have to double and triple check the facts Copilot spews out at me, it’s hardly making me more productive. It can be quite useful to explain complex scientific concepts that have a lot of very detailed and granular high-level data to back it up. But asking it to give accurate information on more “subjective” topics, or perhaps more niche topics, often sees LLMs like ChatGPT struggle. At least in my experience.
I’ve used AI to generate banner images for articles on Windows Central, generally where AI was the topic of the piece and, it at least felt appropriate and relevant. I’m also a fan of Generative Expand that comes with Photoshop for tweaking the aspect ratios on product photographs I’ve taken. I found myself using Samsung’s photos app AI to remove random bystanders from vacation snaps too.
I can’t help but feel like I’m not really using any of these tools to their true potential, though, given how much investment capital is flowing into companies like OpenAI and its competitors.
How are YOU using AI? If you even are using AI, if not, why not? What are your thoughts on it all? Is it ridiculous hype, or is it about to totally revolutionize and upend society as we know it? Drop in the comments, let us know.
