Consumers are not the main driver of profit, speculative value is. Microsoft knows that Windows is guaranteed to be on the majority of PC's, which means they can afford to implement hostile features that increase the speculative value on data collection and AI investment.

I don't think MS is out of touch with what the customer wants, I think they just stopped listening.

The fact is nobody is asking for this stuff.

I think the hope is that they build it anyway and then people will use/want it. AI is the big buzzword of the decade, just like 'cloud' was the big buzzword of last decade.

In theory, I could use an AI for doing stuff. For example, opening ripped videos, finding the timestamp where the episode name is given, and then copying that into the video's filename. Afterwards, it can open Handbrake, use my preferred settings for audio and subs, then start the conversion of multiple files.

However, this is all predicated on the AI not doing unwanted things - such as giving Microsoft my personal information, preferences in hentai, and passwords.

Someday I will use agentic AI, but it will be on my terms.

I've read this exact questions tens of times now. This is capitalism. Now why would a for profit company ever do anything? I leave you to your deductions.

put the socks on >:3

Woah woah woah, lot's not compare fabulous knee high rainbow socks with the malware MS is putting in their OS. That's not fair to rainbows or socks.

Microsoft is forcefemming en masse.

I don't want to have to start wearing rainbow knee-length socks

it’s pretty obvious that you do

The socks have a bit of a learning curve, depending on what you want to do with them, but it's worth it. It's such a huge relief to not care how much more Windows is getting enshittified this week, since it's not my problem anymore.

I work in IT for businesses and the number of times I've had to debunk AI slop hallucinations as actual troubleshooting information is not zero.

"Yes, I can see the instructions say to check that checkbox, however, that checkbox does not exist" (screenshot of relevant control panel).

This is just evidence, to me, that business types are already relying on AI instead of doing any actual thought or research on any topic they don't already have a deep understanding of, or are too lazy to bother with.

Consumers are not driving this change.

The worst part is that it's an echo chamber of yes-men that seem to be pushing for it. The AI enthusiasts trying to sell their crap, convincing the middle managers that they need their AI crap, and them buying it and asking for more/better AI crap, and the cycle continues. At no point does any of the output of any AI system provide any unique insight, or value, to anyone. The rest of us are being dragged along for the ride, regardless of what we want.

The tech industry puts bazillions of dollars into AI development and now it has to put AI literally everywhere to make it look somehow useful. Whether the customer / user wants this or not. I guess they are hoping that people will eventually like it.

Isn't it so they can train their AI on your personal files?