Windows 11: AI tipped to answer texts on your behalf

In a blog post detailing the latest Windows 11 preview build for Windows Insiders, Microsoft announced a new feature for Phone Link, a tool that lets Android and iOS users sync their phones to their PCs.

Put simply, Microsoft will use all that fancy AI in Windows 11 to automatically generate three generic responses to any text messages you receive, and it's all powered by Microsoft's "cloud-based intelligent suggestion model."

You know, the thing Gmail has done for, like, a really long time, mixed with the predictive text feature that's already built into everyone's phone. This is better though, because it uses "AI" — meaning modern, generative AI. In practical terms that mostly just means it relies on a cloud-based large language model, rather than the less resource-hungry models the predictive text feature has relied on for years.

It takes three seconds to just type something yourself. Credit: Microsoft

There are times when generative AI does seem genuinely kind of useful and novel, and there are times when it clearly just exists to facilitate laziness. Using a cloud-based LLM for texting means burning through a small town's worth of electricity just to have a computer suggest that you reply "Not bad, you?" when someone asks how your day is going. If you think that's overkill, maybe you can just take three seconds to type that out yourself.

As a bonus, you'll avoid a scenario where your friends and family can definitely tell that you don't even bother typing your own text responses.